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THE  STORY  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
OF  ENGLAND 


GEORGE   III. 
From  a  painting  by  Allan  Ramsay,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NATIONS 


THE  STORY  OF  THE 
PEOPLE  OF  ENGLAND 

IN  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


BY 


JUSTIN  MCCARTHY 

AUTHOR  OF  "A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES,"  "  LIFE  OF  SIR  ROBERT  PEEL* 
"THE  STORY  OF  GLADSTONE'S  LIFE,"  ETC. 


PART  I. 
1800-1835 


83r) 

NEW  YORK 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

LONDON:  T.  FISHER  UNWIN 
1899 


COPYRIGHT,  1898 

By  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London 

BY  T.  FISHER  UNWIN 


TTbe  ftnfcfeerbocfeer  press,  Hew  JQorft 


5-50 
Mia 

PREFACE 


IN  this  work  my  purpose  is  to  give  an  account  of 
the  social  and  political  development  of  England 
since  the  opening  of  the  century.     I  do  not  attempt 
pi   anything  like  a  minute  and  detailed  history  of  the 
events  that  followed  each  other  during  that  time  ; 
N      and  indeed  my  intention  is  rather  to  draw  something 
^    like  a  picture  than  to  give  to  my  readers  a  chronicle 
and  a  record.     I  have  endeavoured  to  describe  each 
remarkable  political  and  social  development,  and  to 
group  the  statesmen  and  philanthropists  of  every 
order  by  whom  each  development  was  assisted  in  its 
progress. 

I  have,  while  keeping  in  view  the  order  of  histori- 
cal succession,  endeavoured  to  make  the  story  of 
each  great  reform,  political  or  social,  a  story  com- 
plete in  itself,  and  disentangled  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  cluster  and  confusion  of  events  that  were 
passing  all  around  it,  and  exterior  to  it.  The  true 
history  of  England  during  that  long  period  of  mar- 
vellous growth  will  be  found  to  be  the  history  of  the 
country's  progress  in  education,  in  science,  and  in 
the  conditions  that  tend  to  make  life  useful,  health- 
ful, and  happy.  Successive  changes  in  administra- 


IV  PREFACE 

tion,  the  rivalries  of  statesmen  at  home  and  abroad, 
the  barren  wars  which  spring  from  the  competing 
ambitions  of  dynasties  are,  after  all,  but  the  acci- 
dental difficulties  in  the  way  of  man's  improvement ; 
and  while  they  cannot  be  denied,  their  proportion- 
ate representation  in  history  is  sometimes  dealt 
with  as  if  they  were  the  main  events  of  history,  and 
were  entitled  to  occupy  the  largest  space  and  fore- 
most place  in  the  picture  drawn  by  the  historian. 
My  purpose  has  been  something  different  from  this ; 
my  desire  has  been  to  describe  the  marvellous 
changes  wrought  by  science  and  literature,  by  states- 
men and  philanthropists  in  the  social  life  of  England 
during  the  wonderful  century  which  is  now  drawing 
to  a  close.  My  wish  has  been  to  make  my  readers 
acquainted  with  the  men  who  helped  to  bring  about 
those  changes,  as  well  as  with  the  nature,  extent, 
and  influence  of  the  changes  themselves;  and  thus 
to  tell  the  story  of  England's  nineteenth  century  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  secure  it  an  easy  way  to  the 
understanding,  and  a  place  in  the  memory  of  even 
my  youngest  readers. 

JUSTIN  MCCARTHY. 

LONDON,  Dec.  i,  1898. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  ARMS   AND    THE    MAN      .....  I 

ii.  ENGLAND'S  "  BENEVOLENT  DESPOT  "     .        .  7 

III.  IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE    ...  23 

IV.  GEORGE  IV.  .     .     .     .     .     .     -45 

V.  THE    CATO    STREET    CONSPIRACY     ...  63 

VI.  GEORGE  CANNING  .....  82 

VII.  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  .  .  .  1 19 

VIII.  COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADOW  BEFORE  .  150 

IX.  THE  GREAT  REFORM  BILL  ....  173 

X.  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  ....  209 

XI.  SLAVERY — BLACK    AND    WHITE        .            .            .  239 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

GEORGE  in.      .....        Frontispiece 

From  a  painting  by  Allan  Ramsay,  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery. 

NAPOLEON  AT  ARCOLA      4 

From  the  painting  by  Gros. 

LORD  NELSON 6 

After  a  painting  by  A.  W.  Devis. 

WILLIAM  PITT 8 

From  a  painting  by  John  Hoppner,  R.A.,  in  the  Na- 
tional Portrait  Gallery. 

CHARLES  JAMES  FOX IO 

from  a  painting  by  Karl  Anton  Hickel,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN  .  .  .  .12 

From  a  painting  by  John  Russell,  R.A.,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH 14 

From  Cochrane's  engraving'  of  the  painting  by  Boxall. 

TRAFALGAR  SQUARE 22 

JOHN  KEATS 30 

From  a  painting  by    William  Hilton,    R.A.,    in   the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

LORD  BROUGHAM 36 

From  a  painting  by  James  Lonsdale,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

vii 


viii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PACK 

LORD  ELDON 40 

From  a  painting  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.R.A.,  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT 42 

From  a  painting  by  Sir  William  Allan,  R.A.,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

GEORGE  IV. 46 

From  a  painting  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.R.A.,  in 
the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 

QUEEN  CAROLINE      . 48 

From  a  painting  by  James  Lonsdale,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

ST.  PAUL'S  CATHEDRAL     .  .  .  .  .  -         74 

RIGHT  HON.  GEORGE  CANNING,  M.P.  ...         82 

From  a  bust  by  F.   Chantrey,  R.A.,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

GEORGE  GROTE  . 86 

From  a  painting  by  Thomas  Stewardson,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

LORD  BYRON      .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .       108 

From  a  painting  by  Richard   Westall,  R.A.,  in   the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON      .  .  .  .  .  .114 

From  Siborne's  "History  of  the  Waterloo  Campaigns." 

WESTMINSTER  ABBEY I2O 

DANIEL  O'CONNELL,  M.P.  ,  .  .  .  .       130 

From  a  painting  by  Bernard  Mulrenin,  R.H.A.,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

RIGHT  HON.  SIR  ROBERT  PEEL,  BART.,  M.P.         .  .       140 

From  a  painting  by  John  Linnell,  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery. 

JOSEPH  MALLORD  WILLIAM  TURNER,  R.A.  .  .       148 

From  a  painting  by  P.  Kramer. 

HOUSES  OF  PARLIAMENT 150 


ILL  US  TRA  TIONS  IX 

PAGE 

JOHN  CONSTABLE,  R.A 154 

From  a  drawing  by  himself,  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 

WINDSOR  CASTLE l6o 

GENERAL  SIR  CHARLES  JAMES  NAPIER,  G.C.B.    .  .       222 

From  a  sketch  by  George  Jones,  R.A.,  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery. 

WILLIAM  WILBERFORCE,  M.P 242 

From  a  picture  by  J.  Rising. 

LORD  MACAULAY 252 

From  a  painting  by  Sir  Francis  Grant,  P.K.A.,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 

EARL  OF  SHAFTESBURY,  K.G 258 

From  a  bust,  modelled  by  Sir  John  Edgar  Boehm,  Bart., 
R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


THE  STORY  OF 

THE   PEOPLE  OF  ENGLAND  IN  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


CHAPTER  I 

ARMS  AND   THE   MAN 

IN  the  Annual  Register  for  the  year  1800  we  find 
on  the  opening  page  of  its  preface  a  remarkable 
prophecy.  "  The  Temple  of  Janus,"  says  the  pre- 
face, "  is  shut;  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  hope  that 
it  will  be  long  before  it  be  again  opened.  A  dread- 
ful but  salutary  experiment  in  the  course  of  the  last 
ten  years  has  been  made  by  the  nations.  The  rulers 
of  states  and  kingdoms  have  been  taught  the  danger 
of  tyranny ;  the  people  that  of  anarchy ;  the  finan- 
cier that  even  commercial  advantages  may  be  too 
dearly  purchased ;  the  politician  and  statesman  that 
durable  power  consists  not  so  much  in  extended 
territory  as  in  compacted  dominion,  flourishing 
population,  and  above  all  in  justice — justice  in  the 
conduct  of  governments  external  as  well  as  internal. 


2  ARMS  AND  THE  MAN 

We  are  henceforth,  we  hope  and  doubt  not,  for 
many  years,  to  be  called  from  the  horrors  and  mis- 
eries of  war  to  progressive  improvement  in  all  the 
arts  of  peace ;  a  nobler  as  well  as  a  more  pleasing 
and  profitable  career  of  ambition  among  civilised 
nations  than  that  of  conquest.  The  energy  of  our 
ingenious  and  lively  neighbours  will  return  to  the 
arts  and  sciences  with  an  elastic  force  proportioned 
to  the  misguided  ardour  that  has  too  long,  propelled 
them  to  the  ensanguined  field  of  battle.  Their  im- 
provements will  be  our  gain,  as  ours  also  will  be 
theirs." 

This  prophecy  had  not  long  been  delivered  before 
it  became  only  too  evident  that  it  was  to  be  miser- 
ably falsified  by  the  events  of  the  times.  The 
settlement  on  which  the  Annual  Register  so  confid- 
ently relied  proved  to  be  no  settlement  at  all,  and 
England  and  France  were  soon  at  war  again.  The 
fiercest  days  of  all  that  long  struggle  were  to  come 
between  1800  and  1815.  England  had  as  her  chief 
enemy  then  the  greatest  military  figure  that  had 
appeared  in  the  world's  history  since  the  days  of 
Julius  Caesar.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  hurried  home 
from  Egypt  and  obtained  such  powers  as  made  him 
practically  the  dictator  of  France.  We  have  had, 
of  late  years,  a  whole  new  literature  devoted  to  the 
character  and  career  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  The 
secret  cabinets  of  statesmen,  the  archives  of  ambas- 
sadorial offices,  have  poured  out  new  masses  of  cor- 
respondence and  manuscript  of  all  kinds  to  throw 
fresh  light  on  Napoleon's  chapters  of  history.  Yet, 
after  all,  the  man  remains  much  as  he  must  have 


ASMS  AND  THE  MAN  3 

seemed  in  the  eyes  of  impartial  observers — if  there 
were  then  any  such  observers — in  his  own  days. 
We  have  long  outgrown  the  age  of  the  "  Corsican 
ogre  "  theory.  Caricature  is  itself  caricatured  by 
the  grotesque  and  ridiculous  illustration  which  found 
such  favour  with  Englishmen  in  the  days  of  George 
III. — the  sketch  which  represented  George  as  hold- 
ing the  Liliputian  Bonaparte  on  the  palm  of  his 
hand,  and  trying  to  "  size  him  up  " — as  the  Ameri- 
can phrase  might  put  it — by  the  help  of  a  field-glass. 
We  know  all  that  can  be  told  us  of  Napoleon's  de- 
fects, some  monstrous,  some  ignoble,  but  we  recog- 
nise the  genius  of  the  man,  and  we  can  hardly  be 
surprised  if  there  were  English  statesmen  who  firmly 
believed  that  there  never  could  be  peace  in  Europe 
while  Napoleon  was  the  ruler  of  France.  Perhaps  the 
illustration  used  at  a  much  later  period  by  Prevost- 
Paradol  to  describe  the  antagonism  between  France 
and  Prussia  thirty  years  ago  might  apply  well  enough 
to  the  antagonism  between  England  under  her  Gov- 
ernment at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century 
and  France  under  the  dictation  of  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte. It  was  a  case  of  the  two  express  trains  started 
from  opposite  extremes  of  the  same  line  of  railway ; 
the  collision  and  the  crash  must  come.  To  do  Na- 
poleon justice,  it  must  be  said  that  he  did  make 
overtures  to  England  for  the  establishment  of  an 
honourable  and  a  lasting  peace.  The  English  Gov- 
ernment of  the  day  did  not  believe  that  his  word 
could  be  trusted,  or  his  oath,  and  they  rejected  his 
approaches,  or  at  least  they  stipulated  for  impossi- 
ble preliminary  conditions,  such  as  a  restoration  of 


4  ARMS  AND  THE  MAN 

the  Bourbons  by  the  permission,  and  we  may  say 
the  patronage,  of  Napoleon.  The  result  was  that 
the  war  broke  out  again  with  something  like  re- 
doubled passion,  and  until  the  fall  of  Napoleon  at 
Waterloo  it  knew  no  check  or  stay.  It  was  alto- 
gether a  question  of  opposing  tendencies  rather 
than  opposing  forces.  The  Government  were  striv- 
ing, unconsciously,  no  doubt,  to  fight  not  merely 
against  Napoleon,  but  against  the  whole  impulses, 
principles,  and  tendencies  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Napoleon  himself  could  no  more  have  secured  a 
throne  in  France  to  a  Bourbon  sovereign,  to  the 
principles  of  Bourbon  sovereignty,  than  George  III. 
could. 

It  is  idle  now  to  speculate  on  what  might  have 
happened  if  George  III.  and  his  advisers  had  given 
full  and  fair  consideration  to  the  overtures  of 
Napoleon.  Undoubtedly  they  were  wrong  in  not 
doing  so,  but  being  the  men  they  were  they  could 
not  have  done  so.  The  war  had  to  go  on.  Happily 
for  England  she  had  at  the  head  of  her  armies  the 
one  man  in  the  world  who  was  best  qualified  to  stand 
out  against  Napoleon's  passion  of  conquest.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  had  nothing  like  the  creative, 
or  we  may  call  it,  if  we  like,  the  aggressive,  military 
genius  of  Napoleon.  But  he  was  the  embodied 
genius  of  resistance.  He  had  absolutely  no  military 
ambition  whatever.  His  strong  guiding  force  was 
simply  a  sense  of  duty  to  his  King  and  to  his  country. 
In  military  as  in  civil  affairs  he  was  dominated  by 
that  same  sense  of  duty.  He  had  a  patience  which, 
as  Macaulay  says  of  a  like  quality  in  Warren  Hast- 


NAPOLEON     AT    ARCOLA. 
From  the  painting  by  Gros. 


ARMS  AND  THE  MAN  5 

ings,  might  sometimes  be  mistaken  for  the  patience 
of  stupidity ;  but  those  who  counted  on  its  being  an 
evidence  of  stupidity  were  sure  to  be  confounded  in 
the  end  by  the  ever- watchful,  sleepless  intellect  that 
was  always  on  the  alert  to  find  a  weak  point  in  the 
plans,  the  policy,  the  strategy,  and  even  the  tactics 
of  an  opponent.  The  fates  had  brought  the  destruct- 
ive and  the  conservative  forces  of  command  into 
direct  antagonism  in  the  persons  of  Napoleon  and 
the  .Duke  of  Wellington.  Wellington  was  nick- 
named "  the  Iron  Duke,"  and  the  nickname  was  a 
terse  and  admirable  description  of  his  character. 
England's  continental  allies,  as  we  all  know  now, 
were  at  many  momentous  periods  divided  and  dis- 
tracted in  council,  and  they  had  hardly  amongst 
them  any  general  who  could  really  be  said  to  belong 
to  the  first  order  of  military  command.  England 
was  no  doubt  divided  somewhat  in  opinion  as  regards 
the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  many  of  the  noblest 
Englishmen  were  strongly  of  opinion  that  the  over- 
tures made  by  Napoleon  for  peace  should  be  taken 
seriously  and  declared  the  subject  of  grave  inter- 
national consultation.  But  in  what  may  be  called 
the  executive  of  the  councils  of  England  there  was 
no  division  of  opinion,  and  when  "  the  Iron  Duke  " 
was  told  that  the  war  must  go  on  he  asked  no  further 
questions,  but  entered  the  field  and  held  his  own 
position. 

So  the  war  went  on  and  on,  until  Wellington 
won  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and  then  all  was  over. 
Napoleon  had  suffered  terrible  losses  and  disasters 
by  his  ill-fated  Russian  campaign  and  by  the  de- 


6  ARMS  AND  THE  MAN 

feat  which  the  continental  allies  were  able  to  in- 
flict upon  him  at  Leipsic.  Wellington's  stroke  at 
Waterloo  was  but  as  the  "  dagger  of  mercy  "  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  which  brought  about  at  one  touch  the 
doom  that  could  not  by  any  possibility  be  much 
longer  averted.  A  great  French  writer  declares  that 
the  main  difference  between  Caesar  and  Napoleon 
was,  that  Caesar  always  knew  what  he  could  not  do 
as  well  as  what  he  could  do,  and  that  Napoleon  be- 
lieved himself  capable  of  every  triumph  which  he 
wished  to  accomplish.  Napoleon  had  attempted 
the  impossible,  and  he  failed  accordingly. 


LORD    NELSON,    K.B. 
After  a  painting  by  A.  W.  Devis. 


CHAPTER  II 
ENGLAND'S  "  BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

LET  us  see  what  was  the  condition  of  England  at 
the  time  when  Napoleon's  career  was  drawing 
to  its  close.  So  long  as  the  great  war  was  going  on 
England  kept  a  united  front  to  the  enemy.  But  of 
course  there  were  internal  divisions  of  opinion. 
There  was  in  domestic  affairs  what  we  should  call  a 
reform  policy,  and  also  an  anti-reform  or  conserv- 
ative policy.  While  the  war  was  raging  men's 
thoughts  were  turned  away  from  anything  like  a 
systematic  .prosecution  of  the  reform  cause,  and  it 
would  have  been  impossible  to  get  the  British  Par- 
liament to  pay  any  serious  attention  to  proposals 
for  an  improved  financial  system,  for  the  equalisation 
of  burdens  on  the  different  tax-paying  classes,  or  for 
an  improvement  in  the  franchise  and  the  general 
representative  system.  But  there  were  always  some 
men  who  did  their  very  best  to  keep  the  reform  light 
burning,  even  through  the  most  agitating  hours  of 
continental  war. 

The  great  leader  of  the  Conservative  party  was 
William  Pitt,  son  of  the  Earl  of  Chatham — pub- 
lic opinion  is  still  divided  as  to  which  was  the 
greater  man,  the  elder  Pitt  or  the  younger.  Wil- 

7 


8  ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

Ham  Pitt  the  younger  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the 
greatest  statesmen  and  parliamentary  orators  Eng- 
land has  ever  known.  He  must  be  classed  with 
conservative  statesmen,  because  some  of  the  most 
momentous  passages  of  his  career  were  those  in 
which  he  stood  forth  as  the  opponent  of  all  projects 
of  reform.  Yet  we  know  that  Pitt  was  not  by  in- 
tellect or  by  nature  an  enemy  of  reform ;  he  had 
himself  foreshadowed  and  promised  to  favour  some 
of  the  best  reforms  which  it  was  left  to  other  states- 
men to  accomplish — reforms  which  in  his  later  days 
he  had  to  oppose.  Those  later  days  were  cast  in  the 
worst  of  all  times  for  a  reforming  statesman.  The 
thoughts  of  the  country  were  absorbed  in  the  war, 
and  the  war  was  sincerely  regarded  by  many  honest, 
stolid  men,  like  George  III.  himself,  as  a  calamity 
directly  brought  about  by  the  crazy  enthusiasm  of 
French  reformers.  It  was  part  of  the  creed  of  every 
country  gentleman  who  followed  Pitt  in  those  days 
that  if  the  King  of  France  had  only  refused  to  listen 
to  any  wild  talk  about  liberty  and  equality,  about 
the  abolition  of  class  prerogatives,  and  the  emanci- 
pation of  public  opinion — if  he  had  only  refused  to 
listen  to  such  ravings  and  had  ordered  his  cannoneers 
to  do  their  duty,  the  Revolution  would  have  been 
destroyed  in  its  birth,  and  there  would  have  been 
no  occasion  for  a  war  with  England.  Therefore, 
these  same  country  gentlemen  who  followed  Pitt 
fully  believed  that  every  concession  made  to  the 
demands  of  reformers  in  England  would  be  nothing 
but  an  invitation  for  indulged  reform  to  feast  its 
thoughts  on  revolution. 


WILLIAM    PITT. 
From  a  painting  by  John  Hoppner,  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  g 

All  these  seem  to  us  very  absurd  ideas  now,  but 
we  must  remember  that  they  were  ideas  which  at 
one  time  got  possession  of  and  obscured  the  great- 
est political  intellect  of  the  day,  the  intellect  of 
Edmund  Burke.  At  all  events,  the  King  on  the 
throne  and  the  gentlemen  in  the  provinces  were 
of  one  mind  on  this  subject,  and  they  formed  a 
power  too  strong  for  even  Pitt  to  bear  up  against 
if  he  had  been  inclined  to  make  the  experiment. 
He  was  not  during  his  later  years  inclined  to  make 
any  such  experiment.  The  war  was  too  much  for 
him;  he  died  of  it  almost  as  literally  as  if  he  had 
fallen  upon  the  field  of  battle.  He  never  recov- 
ered from  the  shock  which  was  given  to  him  by 
the  news  of  the  great  defeat  of  the  Allied  Powers 
by  Bonaparte  at  Austerlitz.  His  friends  said  that 
from  that  time  the  "  Austerlitz  look  "  was  always 
on  his  face. 

Pitt's  great  opponent  was  Charles  James  Fox.  It 
is  a  curious  fact  that  in  two  succeeding  generations 
there  should  have  been  in  the  English  Parliament  a 
Pitt  fighting  against  a  Fox.  But  though  the  second 
Pitt  might  well  challenge  comparison  with  the  first, 
the  second  Fox  was  incomparably  superior  to  his 
father,  the  elder  Fox.  Charles  Fox  was  probably 
the  greatest  debater  ever  known  to  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  cannot  be  called  the  greatest  orator 
while  we  remember  Bolingbroke  and  the  two  Pitts 
and  Sheridan,  and  in  a  later  day  Bright  and  Glad- 
stone. But  bearing  all  these  illustrious  names  in 
mind  the  present  writer  still  adheres  to  the  opinion 
that  Fox  was  the  greatest  of  English  debaters.  His 


10          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

mind  was  informed  by  a  generous  enthusiasm  for 
peace  and  for  liberty.  Thomas  Moore,  the  Irish 
poet,  well  described  him  as  an  orator 

"  On  whose  burning  tongue 
Truth,  peace,  and  freedom  hung." 

His  bold,  comprehensive  mind  surveyed  the  whole 
field  of  possible  reform,  and  welcomed  with  eager 
sympathies  every  proposal  which  bore  with  it  any 
practical  promise  of  success.  He  was  a  reformer  not 
merely  for  England,  but  for  Ireland,  for  India,  and 
for  England's  great  colonial  possessions.  He,  too, 
like  his  rival,  William  Pitt,  was  removed  from  the 
front  of  the  political  battle  long  before  the  fall  of 
Napoleon  gave  the  English  the  chance  of  attending 
soberly  to  their  own  domestic  affairs. 

One  of  the  most  brilliant  speakers  in  the  House  of 
Commons  was  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan — also  the 
greatest  dramatic  author  the  English  stage  had 
known  since  the  comedies  of  the  Restoration.  Sher- 
idan's lustre  as  a  parliamentary  orator  has  somewhat 
dimmed,  perhaps,  of  late  years.  No  really  authentic 
reports  of  his  great  speeches  are  preserved,  and  we 
find  it  hard  to  believe  that  even  his  famous  "  Be- 
gum "  speech,  the  speech  attacking  the  administra- 
tion of  Warren  Hastings  in  India,  can  have  deserved 
the  strong  praise  which  was  undoubtedly  given  to  it 
by  all  those  who  heard  it,  no  matter  what  their  politi- 
cal opinions — a  praise  which  set  it  above  any  oration 
delivered  in  Parliament  before.  Sheridan  clung  to 
the  reform  cause  even  at  the  darkest  hours  of  its  his- 
tory. Burke,  who  through  the  best  years  of  his  life 


CHARLES   JAMES    FOX. 
From  a  painting  by  Karl  Anton  Hickel,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  II 

had  been  a  Whig,  or  what  we  should  now  call  a  Lib- 
eral, had  quarrelled  with  Fox  over  the  French  Revo- 
lution, and  had  declared  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  the  friendship  between  them  was  extinguished 
for  ever.  Sheridan  remained  fast  to  his  old  princi- 
ples, but  it  was  not  given  to  him  any  more  than  it 
was  to  Fox  to  see  a  marked  success  accomplished  in 
the  difficult  field  of  reform. 

When  the  fall  of  Napoleon  brought  peace  to 
Europe,  that  peace  found  England  in  a  condition 
which  might  well  have  awakened  despondency  and 
almost  despair  in  the  minds  of  some  of  the  best 
and  wisest  Englishmen.  The  country  was  almost 
starved ;  the  want  of  work  was  felt  everywhere, 
manufacturing  industry  had  collapsed,  and  many 
of  the  provinces  were  traversed  by  gaunt  and  hun- 
gry patrols  of  workmen  looking  for  employment, 
almost  as  distressing  and  alarming  to  meet  as  were 
the  troops  of  the  hungry  whom  Arthur  Young  might 
have  seen  during  some  seasons  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution. England  was,  for  the  time,  practically  ex- 
hausted by  her  war  expenditure.  The  last  three 
years  of  the  struggle  against  Napoleon  are  estimated 
to  have  cost  the  English  Treasury  no  less  than 
^200,000,000  sterling.  Then,  to  add  to  England's 
troubles,  a  tremendous  disappointment  had  fallen 
upon  the  country  with  the  close  of  the  war. 

We  all  know  by  observation  and  experience  what 
a  semblance  of  immense  prosperity  is  caused  by  a 
great  war  in  all  regions  which  it  affects,  except  those 
alone  which  are  made  its  immediate  battle-field. 
The  prosperity  is  purely  artificial  and  fictitious; 


12          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

there  is  an  immense  and  apparently  inexhaustible 
demand  for  all  the  appliances  and  the  provisions  of 
war;  an  unnatural  and  ghastly  show  of  trade  and 
prosperity  is  conjured  up,  and  those  who  are  not 
capable  of  looking  even  a  little  way  before  them 
are  apt  to  think  that  the  resources  of  the  nation  are 
positively  inexhaustible.  The  State,  however,  is 
not  creating  a  vast  prosperity,  but  only  pledging  its 
credit  for  an  enormous  debt.  Thus  it  was  with  Eng- 
land when  the  wished-for  peace  had  at  last  been 
brought  about.  The  common  belief,  not  unnatur- 
ally, was  that  with  peace  must  come  prosperity,  and 
the  disappointment  was  tremendous  indeed  when  at 
first  nothing  but  calamity  seemed  to  be  brought 
about.  While  the  war  was  going  on  there  was  not 
merely  the  sham  prosperity  to  keep  up  the  spirits  of 
the  people,  but  there  was  the  stress  and  ardour  of  the 
struggle  to  make  all  other  considerations  seem  light 
when  weighed  in  the  balance  with  victory.  The 
English  people  suddenly  woke  up  from  their  fool's 
paradise  to  find  that  under  certain  conditions  peace 
had  her  horrors  scarcely  less  appalling  than  those  of 
war.  In  truth,  England  found  herself  face  to  face 
with  a  crisis  hardly  less  portentous  than  that  which 
France  had  to  encounter  when  she  began  her  mo- 
mentous work  of  revolution. 

Francis  Horner,  the  great  politician  and  economist 
of  that  day,  wrote  with  some  despondency  about  the 
wide  and  irreconcilable  differences  of  opinion  "  be- 
tween those  who,  on  the  one  hand,  will  hear  of  no- 
thing but  to  return  to  all  that  was  undone  by  the 
French  Revolution,  and  those  who,  on  the  other 


RICHARD    BRINLEY    SHERIDAN. 
From  a  painting  by  John  Russell,  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  13 

hand,  think  that  the  French  people  have  some  right 
to  make  and  to  mend  their  Government  for  them- 
selves." Francis  Horner,  be  it  remembered,  was 
only  speaking  of  those  who  may  be  called  the  mod- 
erate men  on  both  sides ;  he  was  not  speaking  of 
those,  on  the  one  hand,  who  would  try  to  impose 
on  the  English  people  a  system  like  that  of  the  Bour- 
bons in  France,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  those  who 
were  clamouring  for  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity, 
such  as  the  French  Democrats  were  striving  to  es- 
tablish. 

In  truth,  the  story  of  England's  nineteenth  cent- 
ury is  the  story  of  the  choice  which  at  one  time 
seemed  to  be  imposed  on  England  between  revolu- 
tion and  reaction,  and  of  the  trials  and  troubles,  the 
sad  confusions,  the  many  mistakes  and  blunders  by 
the  way,  through  which  at  last  she  was  guided  on  the 
road  to  national  prosperity.  During  the  time  of  her 
struggle  with  Napoleon  she  had  taken  one  decidedly 
backward  step  in  the  management  of  one  depart- 
ment of  her  national  affairs.  Her  ruling  statesmen 
had  succeeded  in  passing  the  Act  of  Union,  which 
took  from  Ireland  all  control  of  her  domestic  affairs 
and  compelled  her  to  enter  into  an  unwilling  com- 
panionship with  the  Parliament  at  Westminster. 
England  had  also  allowed  herself  to  be  drawn  by  a 
mistaken  policy  into  a  war  with  the  young  Republic 
of  the  United  States,  out  of  which  she  only  emerged 
by  the  tacit  surrender  of  the  one  demand  for  the 
sake  of  which  the  war  had  been  undertaken.  She 
still  adhered  to  the  odious  policy  which  denied  the 
right  of  religious  freedom  to  the  Roman  Catholics 


14          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

and  the  Dissenters  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
Indeed,  this  latter  policy  was  the  immediate  impulse 
to  the  Irish  Rebellion  of  1798,  which  was  crushed 
after  much  bloodshed  and  was  made  the  excuse  for 
the  passing  of  the  Act  of  Union. 

We  have  said  that  "  England  "  did  all  these 
things  because  there  is  no  other  convenient  way  of 
describing  in  ordinary  language  the  influence  which 
brought  them  about.  But  it  is  a  most  important 
part  of  our  story  that  English  people  in  general 
had  no  more  to  do  with  such  principles  or  acts  of 
policy  than  the  peasantry  of  France  had  to  do  with 
the  policy  of  Louis  XIV.  The  vast  majority  of  the 
English  people,  according  to  a  favourite  phrase  of 
the  time,  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  laws  but  to 
obey  them — or  to  disobey  them,  if  they  liked  that 
better,  at  their  own  risk  and  peril.  The  Parliament 
at  Westminster  was  in  no  conceivable  sense  the 
representative  of  the  English  people.  It  repre- 
sented the  territorial  aristocracy  and,  to  a  certain 
extent,  but  only  to  a  very  limited  extent,  the  wealth- 
iest of  the  trading  and  manufacturing  classes.  No 
Roman  Catholic,  Dissenter,  or  Jew  could  be  elected 
a  member  of  that  Parliament;  when  all  other  dis- 
qualifications were  absent  there  was  a  property 
qualification  which  prevented  any  poor  man  from 
obtaining  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

It  is  curious  to  notice  now  that  the  reforming  pro- 
gramme which  was  adopted  by  Charles  Fox  included 
amongst  its  leading  principles  universal  suffrage, 
abolition  of  the  property  qualification  for  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  equal  voting  districts,  and 


WM.    WORDSWORTH. 
From  Cochran's  engraving  of  .he  Painting  by  Boxall. 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  1 5 

the  introduction  of  vote  by  ballot  at  parliamentary 
elections.  Fox,  and  those  who  thought  with  him, 
held  that  until  these  reforms  had  been  carried  Parlia- 
ment could  not  possibly  be  regarded  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  people's  opinions  and  the  guardian 
of  the  people's  liberties.  Half  a  century  and  more 
after  the  death  of  Fox  these  demands  were  still  re- 
garded by  all  steady-going  Conservatives  as  the  very 
extravagance  of  Radicalism,  only  fit  for  Chartists 
and  Revolutionists  and  mob-orators  and  other  such 
dangerous  and  monstrous  creatures. 

The  very  names  of  political  parties  have  under- 
gone a  change  since  the  days  of  Fox  and  Pitt.  Fox 
was  a  Whig;  Pitt  in  his  least  happy  days  was  a 
Tory.  The  term  Whig,  when  it  is  now  applied  at 
all,  has  quite  a  different  significance  from  that  which 
it  bore  when  Fox  was  the  Whig  leader.  Then  it 
meant  what  we  should  now  call  an  advanced  Radi- 
cal, a  man  in  the  front  of  every  forward  movement 
for  popular  rights  and  religious  emancipation.  Now, 
when  it  is  used  at  all,  it  only  means  a  lukewarm  and 
backward  Radical,  who  is  scarcely  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  more  intelligent  sort  of  Tory.  Hardly  any- 
one now  avows  or  admits  himself  to  be  a  Tory,  ex- 
cept as  a  sort  of  half-defiant  joke.  The  Whigs  of 
our  time  have  become  Liberals  or  Radicals;  the 
Tories  have  settled  down  to  be  respectable  Conserv- 
atives. We  have,  indeed,  a  great  Democratic  party 
growing  up,  which  is  perhaps  destined  to  absorb 
both  sections  of  Liberalism  into  its  common  de- 
nomination. 

In  the  preface  to  his  interesting  volume,  The  Rise 


16          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

of  Democracy,  lately  published,  Mr.  J.  Holland 
Rose,  the  author,  makes  some  observations  with 
which  this  writer  cordially  agrees.  "  Throughout 
my  inquiry,"  says  Mr.  Rose,  "  I  have  used  the 
term  democracy  in  its  strict  sense  as  government 
by  the  people,  and  not  in  the  slipshod  way  in 
which  it  is  now  too  often  employed  to  denote  the 
wage-earning  classes  "  ;  and  he  adds  that  "  this  mis- 
use of  the  term  is  responsible  for  much  slipshod 
thought  on  political  matters."  There  has,  indeed, 
been  far  too  common  a  tendency  of  late  years  in 
England  to  use  the  phrases  "  the  people  "  and  "  the 
democracy,"  as  if  the  classes  who  work  with  their 
own  hands  at  daily  labour  were  alone  spoken  of 
when  such  words  were  used.  The  democracy  to 
which  the  whole  intelligence  of  England  is  now 
turning  is  that  political  condition  in  which  the  ma- 
jority, representing  "  the  common  sense  of  most," 
will  finally  decide  the  destinies  of  the  State  without 
the  overruling  dictation  of  any  privileged  class  or 
order. 

The  close  of  the  war  found  England  governed  by 
an  oligarchy  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word,  and 
not  by  any  means  an  enlightened  or  an  unselfish 
oligarchy.  The  King,  George  III.,  was  a  man  of 
very  moderate  abilities  and  an  overweening  amount 
of  obstinacy.  Henry  Erskine,  the  great  Scottish 
advocate,  political  orator,  and  wit,  said,  many  years 
ago,  that  what  we  call  obstinacy  in  a  donkey  we  call 
firmness  in  a  king.  We  have  grown,  however,  less 
courtly  in  our  ways  of  late,  and  the  tribute  is  so 
much  the  greater  to  the  really  good  Sovereign  in 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  I? 

whose  praise  we  all  unite.  We  may,  therefore, 
speak  frankly  of  the  obstinacy  of  a  king  and  say 
that  this  quality  in  George  III.  had  nearly  proved 
more  than  once  the  ruin  of  the  country  over  which 
he  had  been  appointed  to  rule.  His  was  the  influ- 
ence which  led  to  the  quarrel  with  the  American 
colonists  and  the  war  which  ended  in  the  independ- 
ence of  the  United  States. 

The  King  himself  found  the  principle  of  policy, 
which,  to  adopt  Johnson's  mistaken  words,  declares 
"  taxation  "  in  that  case  "  no  tyranny,"  especially 
dear  to  his  heart.  His,  too,  was  the  influence 
which  again  and  again  prevented  the  concession  of 
religious  freedom  to  the  Roman  Catholics.  This 
fact  was  made  painfully  evident  on  one  memora- 
ble occasion.  During  the  debates  on  the  Act  of 
Union  with  Ireland,  Pitt  made  an  attempt  to  con- 
ciliate some  of  the  opponents  of  the  measure  by 
holding  out  more  than  once  a  hope  that  the  union 
of  the  two  Parliaments  would  be  followed  by  some 
liberal  concessions  to  the  Catholic  claims.  Many 
of  those  who  were  strongly  inclined  to  oppose  the 
Government  on  this  question  withdrew  their  op- 
position in  consequence  of  the  promises  held  out 
by  Pitt.  But  when  the  Act  of  Union  was  passed 
Pitt  found  it  absolutely  impossible  to  induce  the 
King  even  to  listen  to  his  arguments  in  favour  of 
the  Catholic  claims.  The  King  went  so  far  as  to 
declare  that  any  further  importunity  from  Pitt  on 
that  subject  would  drive  him  back  into  one  of  his 
fits  of  madness.  George  insisted  that  he  could  not 
countenance  the  recognition  of  the  Catholic  claims 


18          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

without  a  violation  of  his  Coronation  Oath.  It  was 
humorously  said  at  the  time  that  England  had  now 
four  instead  of  three  Estates  in  her  constitutional 
realm — that  whereas  up  to  George's  time  she  had 
only  King,  Lords,  and  Commons,  she  had  now 
King,  Lords,  Commons,  and  Oath. 

George,  in  fact,  threw  his  influence  into  every 
political  question ;  he  put  into  operation  again  and 
again  the  most  momentous  and  seldom-used  pre- 
rogatives of  the  Crown.  He  dissolved  Parliaments 
and  dismissed  Ministers  on  the  slightest  provocation 
or  pretext.  If  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons decided  against  the  policy  of  his  favourite 
Minister,  the  King  took  not  the  slightest  notice  of 
the  decision,  but  maintained  the  Minister  and  the 
policy  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  It  would 
be  hardly  possible  to  conceive  any  course  of  royal 
action  more  entirely  out  of  keeping  with  the  con- 
stitutional usages  of  our  day  than  such  a  stroke  of 
policy  as  that  often  carried  into  effect  by  George 
III.  The  King,  on  one  occasion  when  he  was  dis- 
pleased with  some  public  act  or  utterance  on  the 
part  of  Charles  Fox,  called  for  the  Roll  of  the 
Privy  Councillors,  and  with  his  own  hand  scratched 
out  the  name  of  the  great  Whig  leader  from  the  list. 

England,  in  fact,  had  in  George  III.  a  sort  of 
"  benevolent  despot,"  without  the  supreme  attribute 
of  royal  intellect  which  is  commonly  understood  to 
be  a  part  of  the  ideal  "  benevolent  despot's  "  outfit 
for  the  enterprise  of  government.  It  would  have 
been  well  worth  a  revolution,  could  no  other  means 
have  accomplished  the  object,  for  England  to  get 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  1 9 

rid  of  George  III.'s  cardinal  principle  of  constitu- 
tional government.  We  shall  see  in  the  course  of 
this  volume  how  it  fortunately  came  to  pass  that  the 
English  people  were  enabled  to  secure  for  them- 
selves a  constitutional  and  representative  system  of 
government  without  having  recourse  to  revolution. 
Let  it  be  remembered  that  the  greatest  intellects  of 
the  time  were,  with  few  exceptions,  opposed  to 
George  III.'s  ideas  of  principle  and  of  policy.  The 
course  of  action  which  led  to  the  war  with  America 
was  condemned  to  the  end  by  the  elder  Pitt,  the 
great  Lord  Chatham,  and  by  Edmund  Burke.  The 
policy  of  conciliating  the  Roman  Catholics  was  well 
known  to  be  the  policy  of  Pitt  the  younger,  and  it 
was  only  Pitt's  unfortunate  and  almost  servile  sub- 
mission to  his  master's  dictatorship  which  enabled 
the  King  to  hold  his  own  for  the  time. 

If  we  ask  ourselves  why  the  conduct  of  King 
George  did  not  bring  about  a  revolution,  we  have  to 
look  for  an  answer  to  the  conduct  of  his  enemies  as 
well  as  of  his  friends.  In  the  first  place,  he  was  bet- 
ter served  by  all  political  parties  at  home  than  the 
unhappy  Louis  XVI.  had  ever  been.  Fox  and  Burke 
and  Pitt,  however  they  may  have  differed  in  other 
qualities,  were  all  alike  constitutional  statesmen,  and 
entirely  opposed  to  any  idea  of  domestic  revolution. 
Then,  again,  the  English  people,  as  a  whole,  were 
much  more  patient  in  temper  than  the  French,  and 
indeed  it  must  be  owned  that  the  English  population 
of  the  poorer  order  had  never  had  their  patience  tried 
so  cruelly  and  so  keenly  as  the  patience  of  the  French 
working  classes  had  been.  Moreover,  we  have  just 


2O          ENGLAND'S  ''BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

spoken  of  the  conduct  of  the  King's  enemies,  and  it 
must  be  owned  that  nothing  could  have  been  more 
timely  for  the  stability  of  George's  throne  than  the 
wars  with  France,  so  long  as  they  lasted.  While 
Napoleon  was  still  at  the  head  of  his  armies,  all 
thought  of  a  revolution  in  England  was  out  of  the 
question.  The  heart  and  the  nerves  of  the  nation 
were  braced  up  to  the  one  great  purpose  of  victory 
in  that  struggle,  and  the  King  was  free  for  the  time 
to  play  what  antics  he  pleased  with  the  constitution. 
We  shall  presently  see  that  the  more  serious  domestic 
difficulties  came  when  the  war  was  over  and  the  re- 
turn of  peace  gave  sufferers  time  to  ask  themselves 
what  they  had  got  by  it  all,  and  to  feel  the  full  and 
lonely  pressure  of  their  grievances  undiminished  by 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  struggle  with  the  foreign  foe. 

George  III.,  it  has  been  said,  might  have  made, 
had  he  been  more  nobly  endowed  with  intellect,  a 
fair  illustration  of  the  ideal  "  benevolent  despot." 
He  was  not  in  any  sense  of  the  word  a  bad  man ;  he 
had  none  of  the  personal  vices  with  which  so  many 
princes,  here  and  everywhere  else,  have  been  spoiled. 
He  was  not  a  Louis  XV.  or  a  Charles  II.  He  had 
a  kindly  heart,  and,  according  to  his  lights,  he  en- 
deavoured to  do  his  duty  as  a  husband  and  a  father. 
He  was  a  brave  man, — he  had  shown  it  over  and 
over  again, — at  least  he  had  that  kingly  quality  of 
courage  which  never  fails  when  summoned  on  some 
great  emergency.  Over  and  over  again  his  life  had 
been  attempted,  for  the  most  part,  indeed,  by  ma- 
niacs, but  he  had  never  shown  the  slightest  failure 
of  nerve  or  of  composure ;  and,  after  all,  the  knife  or 


ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT"  21 

the  bullet  of  a  maniac  may  do  work  as  deadly  as  the 
weapon  of  the  sanest  assassin.  George  never  showed 
the  slightest  desire  to  deal  harshly  with  those  who 
made  attempts  on  his  life.  He  was  himself  the  first 
on  more  than  one  occasion  to  suggest  that  the  at- 
tempt was  but  the  outcome  of  insanity,  and  his  in- 
clinations were  always  on  the  side  of  mercy.  He 
showed  many  times  that  he  could  act  with  prompt- 
ness and  decision  in  cases  of  sudden  and  unforeseen 
difficulty.  Nobody  could  have  had  less  sympathy 
with  the  Catholic  claims,  and  yet,  when  Lord  George 
Gordon's  "  No  Popery  "  riots  broke  out,  and  carried 
destruction  to  the  homes  of  so  many  Catholics  and 
their  friends,  the  King  insisted  on  the  complete 
suppression  of  the  outrages,  and  declared  that  if  the 
riots  were  not  put  down  within  a  certain  time,  he 
would  himself  take  the  command  of  the  Life  Guards, 
and  charge  the  rioters  in  person. 

It  has  to  be  said,  too,  for  George  III.,  that  he  had 
not  been  well  brought  up  in  his  home  life,  and  some 
of  his  apologists  are  fond  of  arguing  that  even  his  very 
obstinacy  was  encouraged  in  him  by  his  mother,  who 
loved  in  his  early  days  to  impress  on  him  that  he  must 
always  show  himself  to  be  a  king  and  make  his  word 
obeyed  by  his  Ministers  and  by  his  people.  He 
had  long  been  liable  to  attacks  in  the  head,  and  his 
reign  was  not  very  far  advanced  when  the  malady 
began  to  declare  itself  in  the  form  of  intermittent 
insanity.  Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  renewed  hos- 
tilities with  France,  one  of  these  fits  of  madness 
came  on,  which  led  to  long  debates  as  to  the  neces- 
sity for  appointing  a  Regent  to  take  his  place.  The 


22          ENGLAND'S  "BENEVOLENT  DESPOT" 

obvious  and  natural  idea  was,  of  course,  that  his  son 
George, who  afterwards  succeeded  him  on  the  throne, 
should  be  put  in  his  father's  place  while  the  father's 
malady  lasted.  But  the  hopes  of  many  of  the 
Whigs,  of  nearly  all  the  friends  of  Catholic  emanci- 
pation, and  of  most  of  the  Irish  people  were  already 
set  upon  George,  the  son,  who  had  given  promises 
of  liberal  inclinings  which  his  after-life  did  not  fulfil. 
A  somewhat  unseemly  controversy  was  therefore 
raised  in  Parliament  as  to  whether  George,  the  son, 
was  or  was  not  entitled  by  constitutional  right  to 
assume  his  father's  place  during  his  father's  inca- 
pacity for  public  business.  Here,  it  must  be  owned, 
Fox  and  the  Whigs  made  but  a  poor  figure;  they 
insisted  on  the  absolute  right  of  George,  the  son, 
while  Pitt,  on  the  other  hand,  upheld  what  might 
be  thought  to  be  naturally  the  Whig  doctrine,  and 
maintained  that  it  was  for  the  English  Parliament 
to  decide  as  to  the  proper  person  to  act  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  King.  George,  the  son,  was,  of  course, 
chosen  for  the  place,  and  would  have  been  so  chosen 
in  any  case.  The  health  of  the  King  became  worse 
and  worse  as  years  went  on.  He  lost  his  sight ;  he 
lost  his  hearing;  his  madness  increased,  until  at  last 
he  had  to  be  kept  under  almost  constant  restraint, 
and  was  indeed  much  more  thoroughly  a  madman 
than  Shakespeare  has  pictured  his  King  Lear.  Poor 
George's  death  must  have  come  as  a  relief  to  him  in 
the  end.  Even  the  sternest  historian  may  afford  to 
be  lenient  with  him.  His  end  was  less  heroic,  and 
even  more  tragic,  than  that  of  Louis  XVI. 


CHAPTER  III 

IN   THE   WAKE   OF   THE   PEACE 

IT  is  necessary  to  go  back  for  a  little  in  order  to 
take  a  glance  at  the  condition  in  which  Europe 
was  left  by  the  Treaty  of  Vienna.  That  treaty  was 
agreed  upon  by  the  representatives  of  the  European 
allies,  and  was  already  signed  at  the  Congress  of 
Vienna  on  the  Qth  of  June,  1815.  When  the  fall 
of  Napoleon  took  place,  the  Allied  Powers  had  there- 
fore little  more  to  do  than  to  proceed  to  put  in  ac- 
tion the  general  principles  which  were  laid  down  by 
the  Treaty  of  Vienna  and  by  some  previous  agree- 
ments, and  to  settle  the  affairs  of  Europe  according 
to  their  own  convenience  and  good  pleasure.  There 
were  other  treaties  and  agreements  also,  which  were 
found  necessary  to  apply  in  various  countries,  in  order 
to  carry  out  the  general  arrangement.  But  we  may, 
for  the  sake  of  clearness  of  expression,  take  it  that 
the  Treaty  of  Vienna  made  the  grand  settlement  of 
European  affairs  after  the  fall  of  the  French  Empire. 
The  Continent  lay  then  before  theplenipotentiariesof 
the  great  Powers  like  a  corpse  on  the  dissecting-table, 
to  adopt  an  expressive  phrase,  which  was  used  much 
more  lately,  and  with  regard  to  a  different  subject. 

23 


24       IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE 

At  first  it  was  intended  that  France  should  be 
shut  out  from  consultation  or  share  in  the  new  ar- 
rangement; but  the  ingenuity,  the  subtlety,  the 
persuasiveness,  and  the  perseverance  of  Talleyrand, 
the  French  statesman,  succeeded  in  prevailing  on  the 
representatives  of  the  great  victorious  Powers  to 
allow  France  some  voice  in  the  settlement  wherein 
her  national  interests  were  so  profoundly  concerned. 
The  name  of  Talleyrand  is  one  of  the  three  great 
names  which  will  always  belong  to  the  history  of 
the  French  Revolution,  the  other  two  being  those 
of  Mirabeau  and  Napoleon.  European  statesman- 
ship, up  to  that  time,  took  no  account  of  the  feel- 
ings or  wishes  of  nationalities  and  populations  when 
coming  to  a  settlement  after  a  victorious  war. 
When  a  party  of  gamesters  have  finished  their  night 
of  play,  they  simply  count  up  the  gains  and  losses 
and  allocate  the  coins  on  the  table.  It  naturally 
does  not  occur  to  them  to  consider  whether  the  gold 
and  silver  pieces  themselves  have  any  feeling  in  the 
matter,  and  would  prefer  to  remain  with  this  player 
or  to  be  handed  over  to  that  other. 

The  statesmen  assembled  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna 
concerned  themselves  just  as  little  about- the  senti- 
ments and  the  predilections  of  the  populations  with 
whom  they  had  to  deal.  Paris  was  at  this  time  oc- 
cupied by  the  soldiers  of  England  and  of  Prussia. 
Louis  XVIII.,  as  it  was  agreed  that  he  should  be 
called,  was  put  on  his  ancestral  throne.  The  under- 
standing was  that  the  Bourbon  monarchy  was  estab- 
lished for  ever,  and  that  there  was  an  end  for  all  time 
of  any  dream  of  a  Republic  in  France.  Napoleon  sur- 


IN   THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  2$ 

rendered  himself  to  the  captain  of  an  English  ship  of 
war,  and  it  is  a  curious  fact  well  worth  remembering 
that  he  was  received  with  much  cheering  by  a  crowd 
of  Englishmen  on  the  quays  of  an  English  port,  who 
had  become  aware  of  the  great  captive's  identity. 
Napoleon  was  sent  off  to  the  island  of  St.  Helena, 
where  he  languished  for  a  few  years  more,  and 
meantime  the  work  of  European  reconstruction 
went  on.  The  Rhenish  provinces  were  bestowed  on 
Prussia,  a  rich  gift,  not,  it  must  be  owned,  alto- 
gether unwisely  bestowed.  The  Rhenish  provinces 
were  for  the  most  part  Catholic  by  religion,  but  the 
Prussian  Government  has  never  gone  out  of  its  way 
to  intermeddle  with  the  religious  faith  of  its  popula- 
tions, and  the  provinces  soon  amalgamated  thor- 
oughly in  national  spirit  with  the  general  population 
of  Prussia.  The  Prussian  Government  had  even  the 
good  sense  to  leave  the  Code  Napoleon  where  they 
found  it  in  territories  once  occupied  by  France. 
Holland  and  Belgium  were  made  into  one  kingdom, 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Netherlands,  under  the  rule  of 
the  House  of  Orange.  This  arrangement  only  held  to- 
gether for  a  very  few  years,  and  Holland  and  Belgium 
were  enabled  to  effect  a  separation,  mainly  by  the 
help  of  France,  and  each  set  up  as  a  kingdom  for  itself. 
The  difficulty  which  had  stood  so  much  in  the 
way  of  the  great  Orange  statesman,  William  the 
Silent, — the  difficulty  of  keeping  Hollanders  and 
Belgians  together, — was  not  likely  to  be  got  over  by 
the  decree  of  a  number  of  statesmen  recasting 
Europe  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna.  Prussia  had 
been  stripped  of  a  vast  portion  of  her  territories 


26  IN   THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

by  the  Napoleonic  conquests,  and  the  statesmen  of 
Vienna  restored  all  the  plunder  to  the  Prussian 
dynasty.  It  did  even  more  than  that — it  handed 
over  to  Prussia  one-half  of  Saxony,  and  it  gave  her 
also  a  large  portion  of  the  old  Duchy  of  Warsaw, 
the  territory  which  we  now  call  Prussian  Poland. 
The  greater  part  of  Poland  was  handed  over  to 
Russia.  Austria  was  endowed  with  the  Kingdom  of 
Lombardy  and  Venice,  and  within  less  than  half  a 
century  Austria,  after  tremendous  losses  in  war,  was 
compelled  by  the  intervention  of  another  Napoleon 
to  disgorge  part  of  her  ill-gotten  possessions,  and 
thus  allow  Lombardy  to  open  the  way  for  a  new 
Kingdom  of  Italy.  Genoa  was  annexed  to  Sardinia ; 
the  States  of  the  Church  were  restored ;  and  Naples 
and  Sicily  were  handed  back  to  the  old  Bourbon 
rulers.  Russia  and  Austria  came  out  of  the  trans- 
action with  the  largest  spoils,  Prussia,  for  the  most 
part,  recovering  only  what  she  had  held  before  the 
great  war  with  France.  England,  to  do  her  justice, 
sought  for  little  or  nothing,  and  obtained  little  or 
nothing  by  the  arrangement  of  the  Congress  of 
Vienna.  She  had  borne  the  heaviest  and  costliest 
part  of  the  work ;  her  navies  on  the  ocean  had  de- 
feated Napoleon  at  the  very  zenith  of  his  power, 
and  she  had  only  her  glory  as  a  reward :  let  it  be 
owned  that  the  glory  of  English  arms  was  never 
made  more  splendidly  manifest  than  it  was  on  the 
seas  under  Nelson  and  his  comrades  in  battle. 

Few  of  the  novelties  set  up  by  the  Congress  of 
Vienna  held  very  long  together.  Austria  had  to  go 
through  a  most  troublous  career — to  surrender  Lorn- 


IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEA  CE       2J 

bardy  to  French  arms  and  Venetia  to  the  arms  of 
Prussia  and  of  Sardinia.  Prussia  drove  Austria,  after 
seven  weeks'  war,  out  of  the  Germanic  federation 
altogether.  The  elder  branch  of  the  Bourbons  was 
ejected  from  the  throne  of  France;  the  younger 
branch  which  succeeded  held  that  throne  for  only 
eighteen  years ;  then  there  was  another  French  Re- 
public, followed  by  another  French  Empire,  which 
itself  fell  under  the  conquering  hand  of  Prussia, 
and  now  once  more  a  Republic  prevails  in  France. 
The  whole  war  against  Napoleon  was  undertaken 
avowedly  with  the  object  of  restoring  the  principle 
of  legitimate  monarchy  to  its  old  place  in  France, 
and  rooting  out  for  ever  the  growth  of  democracy 
and  republicanism.  Little  more  than  half  a  century 
had  passed  before  a  Republic  was  again  set  up  by 
the  French  people,  and  there  does  not  now  seem  the 
slightest  chance,  come  what  else  there  may,  of  a 
Bourbon  or  an  Orleans  sovereign  being  thought  of 
again  by  France. 

The  Holy  Alliance,  as  it  was  afterwards  called, — 
the  Alliance  started  by  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  and 
joined  in  by  the  Emperor  of  Austria  and  the  King 
of  Prussia, — proclaimed  its  mission.  The  Holy  Alli- 
ance was  a  natural  outcome  of  the  principles  and 
purposes  which  led  up  to  the  agreement  made  at  the 
Congress  of  Vienna.  It  is  well  that  the  proclama- 
tions and  the  purposes  of  the  Holy  Alliance  should 
not  be  allowed  to  fade  from  public  memory.  Syd- 
ney Smith  forcibly  and  very  justly  spoke  of  the 
Sovereigns  who  made  themselves  into  the  Holy 
Alliance  as  "  the  crowned  conspirators  of  Verona." 


28  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

The  declaration  of  the  Holy  Alliance  was  contained 
in  a  manifesto  issued  by  the  Emperor  of  Russia  from 
St.  Petersburg  and  bearing  date  on  the  day  of  the 
birth  of  our  Saviour,  the  25th  of  December,  1815. 
In  this  proclamation  the  Emperor  ordered  that  the 
Convention  concluded  at  Paris  on  the  26th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1815,  should  be  read  in  all  the  churches 
throughout  his  dominions. 

This  was  the  Convention  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  It 
was  arranged  between  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  the 
Emperor  of  Austria,  and  the  King  of  Prussia.  These 
Sovereigns,  to  quote  from  the  words  of  the  Conven- 
tion, "  solemnly  declare  that  the  present  act  has  no 
other  object  than  to  publish  in  the  face  of  the  whole 
world  their  fixed  resolution,  both  in  the  administra- 
tion of  their  respective  States  and  in  their  political 
relations  with  every  other  Government,  to  take  for 
their  sole  guide  the  precepts  of  the  Holy  Religion  of 
our  Saviour — namely,  the  precepts  of  justice,  Christ- 
ian charity,  and  peace,  which,  far  from  being  ap- 
plicable only  to  private  concerns,  must  have  an 
immediate  influence  on  the  Councils  of  Princes  and 
guide  all  their  steps,  as  being  the  only  means  of  con- 
solidating human  institutions  and  remedying  their 
imperfections."  The  Sovereigns  therefore  pledged 
themselves  to  "  remain  united  by  the  bonds  of  a  true 
and  indissoluble  fraternity,  and  to  use  their  arms  to 
protect  religion,  peace,  and  justice."  Then  the  Con- 
vention went  on  to  explain  that  it  was  not  by  any 
means  the  intention  of  the  Sovereigns  who  signed 
it  to  limit  the  blessings  of  those  counsels  of  perfec- 
tion to  the  uses  of  the  Holy  Allies  only,  and  to  leave 


IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  2$ 

all  other  European  states  out  in  the  cold.  On  the 
contrary,  the  document  contained  the  cheering 
intelligence  that  "  all  Powers  which  were  willing 
solemnly  to  avow  the  sacred  principles  which  have 
dictated  the  present  act  will  be  received  with  equal 
ardour  and  affection  into  this  Holy  Alliance." 

The  world  was  not  long  left  in  suspense  as  to  the 
inner  meaning  of  this  agreement.  The  Emperor 
of  Russia,  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  and  the  King  of 
Prussia  had  their  own  ideas  as  to  the  way  in  which 
peace,  religion,  and  justice  were  to  be  maintained. 
Peace  was,  in  the  opinion  of  these  Allied  Powers,  to 
be  secured  by  enslaving  their  own  peoples  and  every 
population  which  was  to  be  put  under  their  control. 
Religion  meant  the  Divine  Right  of  Sovereigns  to 
govern  according  to  their  own  despotic  humours. 
Justice  consisted  in  the  suppression  of  free  speech 
and  of  every  other  popular  right  or  demand,  in  order 
that  subjects  might  be  taught  to  know  their  place, 
and  compelled  to  keep  in  the  position  to  which  it 
had  pleased  the  Congress  of  Vienna  to  call  them. 
In  other  words,  as  a  modern  writer  has  described  the 
situation,  the  crowned  conspirators  "  proclaimed 
themselves  the  champions  and  ministers  of  religion 
and  justice,  but  reserved  to  themselves  the  right  of 
defining  what  religion  and  justice  were." 

"Show  me  the  man,  and  I  '11  show  you  the  law," 
was  a  bitter  old  Scottish  saying.  "  Show  me  the 
Sovereigns,  and  I  '11  show  you  the  religion,  law,  and 
justice, ' '  would  have  been  a  saying  strictly  applicable 
to  the  Holy  Alliance.  The  Sovereigns  bound  them- 
selves to  unite  in  putting  down  revolutionary  agita- 


30        IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE 

tion  wherever  it  might  upheave  itself,  and  we  all 
know  what  they  would  have  defined  as  revolutionary 
agitation.  Every  state  which  should  afterwards 
join  the  Alliance  would  be  understood  to  have 
pledged  itself  to  lend  the  aid  of  its  arms  and  its 
troops  to  put  down  whatever  might  be  defined  as 
revolutionary  agitation.  The  deliberate  purpose  of 
the  Holy  Alliance  was  to  restore  the  dethroned 
Princes  and  Grand  Dukes  everywhere,  to  set  up 
again  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  in  France  and  every- 
where else  over  which  their  power  extended,  to  bring 
back  to  France  the  old  days  and  the  old  ways  of  the 
Bourbon,  and  to  establish  as  the  reign  of  law  the 
principle  that  one  despot  was  bound  to  assist  another 
in  maintaining  a  despotic  authority ;  but  that  one 
people  was  not  free  to  help  itself  or  any  other  people 
to  liberty. 

The  Holy  Alliance,  in  fact,  quite  overdid  its  work. 
The  Allied  Sovereigns  took  no  account  of  time ;  the 
season  was  not  one  when  an  enlightened  philosophy 
had  much  influence  over  political  action;  and  the 
two  Emperors  and  the  King  did  not  understand  that 
there  was  anything  like  a  law  of  political  develop- 
ment. So  they  went  to  work  with  their  cheery  faith 
in  their  own  power  to  stop  the  movement  of  time 
and  the  process  of  growth.  The  influence  they 
afterwards  obtained  over  the  councils  of  reactionary 
dynasties  in  France  and  Spain  became  the  principal 
means  of  upsetting  the  whole  fabric  on  which  the 
Holy  Alliance  was  founded.  When  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  heard  of  the  treaty,  he  gave  it  but  a 
cold  reception,  and  said  something  to  the  effect  that 


JOHN    KEATS. 
From  a  painting  by  William  Hilton,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


IN  THE    WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  3! 

he  thought  the  Sovereign  and  the  Government  of 
England  would  ask  for  a  somewhat  more  explicit 
and  practical  statement  as  to  the  actual  purposes  of 
the  Alliance.  There  can,  however,  be  little  doubt 
that  the  feelings  of  those  most  immediately  around 
the  English  Sovereign  would  have  led  them  far  on 
the  way  with  the  work  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  In 
point  of  fact,  for  a  time  such  Ministers  as  Lord 
Liverpool  and  Lord  Castlereagh  were  very  willing 
indeed  that  England  should  lend  herself  to  the  con- 
spiracy of  Verona. 

It  was  only  when  Canning  came  into  power  that 
a  complete  severance  took  place,  once  for  all, 
between  the  policy  of  England  in  foreign  affairs 
and  the  principles  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  Even 
if  England  had  joined  in  the  conspiracy,  it  is  ut- 
terly impossible  that  it  could  have  held  its  own 
for  any  considerable  length  of  time.  The  genu- 
ine principle  of  democracy  was,  indeed,  a  little  out 
of  favour,  even  in  England,  at  the  day  when  the 
two  Emperors  and  the  King  signed  their  portentous 
treaty.  The  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution 
and  the  military  dictatorship  of  Napoleon  had 
aroused  an  immense  alarm  all  through  England  and 
everywhere  else.  It  cannot  be  questioned  that  even 
in  domestic  policy  the  mind  of  Pitt  was  greatly 
affected  by  the  influence  of  this  alarm.  Reforms 
were  delayed  in  England  because  of  the  difficulty 
which  the  mind  of  the  average  man  had  in  dis- 
tinguishing between  a  demand  for  reform  and  a 
clamour  for  a  revolution.  But  the  democratic  re- 
form must  have  begun  to  develop  before  long,  if  all 


32  IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE 

the  Sovereigns  of  Europe  had  been  combined  against 
it.  Democratic  reform,  to  apply  to  it  the  noble 
language  of  Wordsworth's  sonnet,  had  "  great 
allies,"  its  "  friends  were  exultations,  agonies,  and 
love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind." 

We  shall  show  before  long  how  it  was  reserved  for 
the  best  days  of  Canning's  foreign  policy  not  merely 
to  withdraw  England  from  any  confederacy  with  the 
Holy  Alliance,  but  to  checkmate  altogether  some  of 
its  most  important  and  most  audacious  enterprises. 
With  Canning,  it  may  fairly  be  said,  is  to  begin  the 
modern  era  of  English  foreign  policy.  It  would  be 
idle  now  to  enter  into  any  speculation  as  to  what 
might  have  happened  if  the  English  statesmanship 
of  that  day  had  been  more  like  the  English  states- 
manship of  a  later  day.  It  is  still  a  question  of 
keen  argument  whether  the  war  between  France  and 
England  was  really  forced  on  by  England  or  by 
France.  Some  enlightened  English  writers,  who 
cannot  be  suspected  of  any  lack  of  patriotic  feeling, 
insist  that  but  for  the  policy  and  obstinacy  of  George 
III.  there  never  might  have  been  a  war  with  France. 
English  statesmen  have  learned  much  since  then. 
The  hero  of  the  Iliad  proclaims,  at  least  in  Pope's 
version,  that  "  no  more  Achilles  draws  his  conquer- 
ing sword  in  any  woman's  cause."  English  states- 
manship, we  may  well  believe,  will  never  again  draw 
its  sword  in  the  cause  of  any  foreign  dynasty.  So 
far  as  that  goes,  at  least,  the  principle  of  non-inter- 
vention may  safely  be  said  to  be  established  as  a 
canon  of  British  policy. 

The   settlement  of  international   peace  was  fol- 


IN  THE   WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  33 

lowed  in  England  by  something  very  like  an  out- 
break of  domestic  war.  When  great  suffering 
prevails  among  a  population,  the  first  thought  of 
the  sufferers  is,  naturally,  to  look  to  the  Govern- 
ment for  an  immediate  redress  of  the  evil.  Disraeli 
once  said  that  no  English  Government,  however 
popular,  could  stand  up  against  a  third  bad  harvest. 
The  saying,  of  course,  like  most  of  Disraeli's  say- 
ings, was  meant  to  be  a  sort  of  cynical  epigram  ;  but 
there  was  meaning  in  it  for  all  that.  Popular  suffer- 
ing will  always  mean  political  discontent,  and  po- 
litical discontent,  here,  there,  and  everywhere,  is 
discontent  with  the  existing  Government.  The 
great  Italian  statesman,  Count  Cavour,  used  to 
maintain  that  national  prosperity  or  national  advers- 
ity was  only  a  question  of  good  or  bad  government. 
Perhaps  this  was  giving  somewhat  too  wide  an  ap- 
plication to  a  principle  sound  and  healthy  within  its 
limits;  but  it  certainly  is  a  principle  which  cannot 
be  borne  too  constantly  in  the  minds  of  the  rulers 
of  men. 

After  the  close  of  the  great  war,  the  English 
populations  found  themselves  oppressed  by  pov- 
erty, by  want  of  employment,  and  in  many  re- 
gions by  absolute  starvation.  Employment  had, 
to  a  great  extent,  collapsed ;  the  price  of  food  was 
enormously  high,  and  was  kept  high  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  enabling  the  landlords  to  main- 
tain their  rents.  Bad  weather  added  to  the  troubles ; 
masses  of  agricultural  labourers  and  of  artisans  in 
cities  were  clamouring  for  a  reduction  in  the  prices 
of  grain  and  meat.  These  assemblages  led  to  dis- 

VOL.    I.— 3 


34  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

turbances,  and  to  night  attacks  on  the  houses  of 
landlords  and  magistrates.  In  many  places  the 
wealthier  inhabitants  were  compelled  to  abandon 
their  houses  for  a  time,  in  order  to  save  their  families 
and  themselves  from  violence  at  the  hand  of  hun- 
ger-maddened mobs.  Many  of  the  rioters  were 
captured  and  put  to  trial,  and,  according  to  the 
ferocious  criminal  code  of  the  time,  several  were 
sentenced  to  death,  and  actually  executed.  Rioting 
took  another  form  as  well.  The  rapid  introduction 
of  machinery  into  so  many  manufactories  seemed  to 
illiterate  artisans  but  another  means  of  lowering  the 
wages  of  the  working  man.  Here  and  there  manu- 
factories were  attacked  and  machinery  was  de- 
stroyed, and  the  law  did  all  that  it  could,  in  the 
way  of  severity  of  punishment;  but  severity  of 
punishment  does  not  feed  half-starving  men,  or 
convince  the  intelligence  of  those  who,  while  taking 
no  actual  part  in  riot,  are  yet  in  sympathy  with 
others  who,  driven  by  hunger,  seek  any  means, 
however  desperate,  of  bringing  about  a  better  con- 
dition of  things. 

Under  the  conditions  that  prevailed,  tumult  and 
riot  were  humanly  inevitable,  and  at  that  time  the 
ruling  authorities  had  no  idea  of  dealing  with  dis- 
content except  by  the  prison-cell,  the  transport- 
ship,  and  the  gallows.  Then,  again,  there  was 
much  rancour  and  bitterness  occasioned  at  one  time 
by  the  reports,  only  too  well  founded,  which  went 
abroad  over  the  country,  concerning  the  extrava- 
gance of  the  Prince  Regent  and  his  Court.  George, 
the  Regent,  was  living  in  a  style  which  might 


IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE       35 

have  served  the  tastes  of  an  Eastern  despot  or  a 
Prince  of  the  Lower  Empire.  The  stones  told 
about  his  luxury,  his  reckless  and  wanton  extrava- 
gance, his  monstrous  debts,  were  only  too  well  borne 
out  by  the  nature  of  the  incessant  applications  made 
to  the  House  of  Commons  for  new  grants  to  save 
him  from  bankruptcy.  It  may  easily  be  understood 
how  the  bitterness  of  want  amongst  the  working 
populations  was  made  more  and  more  intense  by 
the  increasing  knowledge  of  the  Regent's  outrageous 
expenditure.  Byron  wrote  in  sarcastic  anger  of  the 
one  comfort  still  left  to  a  patriot  nation,  the  consol- 
ing thought  that — 

"  Gaunt  Famine  never  can  approach  the  throne  ; 
Though  Ireland  starve,  great  George  weighs  twenty 
stone." 

For  some  time  the  expression  of  national  discon- 
>  tent  did  not  shape  itself  into  the  lineaments  of  a  de- 
liberate demand  for  political  reform.  Food,  work, 
and  wages  were  the  first  concessions  for  which  the 
popular  voice  cried  out.  It  was  in  the  beginning 
but  a  wild  cry  of  agony ;  it  soon  awakened  echoes 
from  the  voices  of  men  who  knew  how  to  give  its 
plaint  a  distinct  tone  and  definite  purpose.  Prob- 
ably the  first  successful  attempt  to  put  the  popular 
complaint  into  a  definite  political  form  came  from 
the  teachings  of  William  Cobbett.  Cobbett  was 
emphatically  a  man  of  the  people:  he  was  born 
among  the  people ;  he  had  been  for  several  years  a 
soldier  in  the  army,  and  had  served  in  Canada.  He 
had  been  a  bookseller  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 


36  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

He  was  master  of  a  style  singularly  telling.  His 
language  was  as  clear,  straightforward  Anglo-Saxon 
as  that  of  Swift  himself.  His  ideas  were  sometimes 
wild ;  he  was  not  what  would  be  called  an  educated 
man;  he  knew  little  of  constitutional  systems,  and 
political  economy  had  not  become  a  popular  science 
in  his  time.  But  he  knew  enough  to  know  that 
many  of  the  evils  of  which  Englishmen  then  com- 
plained were  to  be  ascribed  directly  and  almost 
altogether  to  a  bad  system  of  government.  His 
mode  of  reform  was  simple  and  drastic.  He  would 
have  had  one  single  legislative  chamber  elected  by 
ballot  and  by  universal  suffrage.  He  became  what 
we  should  now  call  an  agitator.  He  threw  his  soul 
into  the  movement  for  political  reform.  He  started 
a  newspaper,  which  at  one  time  was  circulated  all 
over  the  country,  and  was  read  in  every  garret  and 
every  cottage — those  who  could  read  declaiming  his 
sentences  to  those  who  could  not.  He  soon  be- 
came a  power  in  the  land,  and,  to  do  him  justice,  he 
did  not  use  his  power  unscrupulously  or  even,  as  far 
as  his  lights  went,  unwisely. 

The  great  reforms  which  England  then  needed 
were:\he  reform  of  the  constitutional  system,  the 
reform  of  the  criminal  code,  the  abolition  of  abuses 
in  the  Court  of  Chancery,  the  reform  of  the  financial 
system,  the  reconstruction  of  the  poor-laws,  and  the 
removal  of  all  the  obstacles  which  interfered  with 
the  spread  of  popular  education  and  the  free  expres- 
sion of  political  opinion.  There  were  many  great 
reformers,  both  inside  and  outside  the  House  of 
Commons,  who  had  long  been  labouring  hard  in  the 


LORD   BROUGHAM. 
From  a  painting  by  James  Lonsdale,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


IN  THE  WAKE  OF  THE  PEACE        37 

best  way  they  could  for  the  remedy  of  the  national 
grievances.  At  the  head  of  the  political  reformers 
of  this  class  the  name  of  Lord  Brougham  must  be 
undoubtedly  placed.  The  fame  of  Lord  Brougham 
has  somewhat  faded  of  late  years.  Perhaps  Brough- 
am lived  rather  too  long  for  his  fame.  Those  of  us 
who  can  still  remember  him  have  a  memory  rather 
of  the  eccentricities  and  extravagances  of  his  later 
years  which  sometimes  put  away  from  recollection 
the  thought  of  those  brighter  and  more  distant 
days  when  Brougham  stood  forth  as  the  foremost, 
the  fearless,  the  indomitable,  and  the  incorruptible 
champion  of  every  great  measure  of  reform  which 
the  needs  of  the  country  demanded. 

Brougham  was  undoubtedly  a  man  of  genius — no 
other  word  could  properly  describe  him.  Despite  an 
almost  repulsive  appearance,  despite  his  ungainly 
and  fantastic  gestures  and  his  exuberance  of  language 
and  of  utterance,  he  was  undoubtedly  a  great  orator. 
A  vehement,  passionate  nature  carried  him  away  in 
debate,  sometimes  beyond  the  ordinary  rules  of  de- 
corum and  even  of  decency.  This  kind  of  passion 
grew  and  grew  upon  him,  until  at  a  later  period  of 
his  career  his  friends  began  to  dread  that  it  might 
develop  into  an  actual  mental  malady.  But,  what- 
ever his  defects,  it  is  certain  that  he  was  not  sur- 
passed, and  hardly  equalled,  by  any  man  in  his  best 
days  for  the  services  which  he  rendered  to  the  cause 
of  reform,  lie  was  thorough-going  in  his  denuncia- 
tion of  the  slavery  system,  of  the  existing  criminal 
code,  of  the  financial  abuses,  and  of  the  evils  in  the 
Court  of  Chancery. 

48392 


38  IN  THE   WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

Another  great  reformer,  especially  as  regarded  the 
slave  system  and  the  criminal  code,  was  Sir  Samuel 
Romilly,  whose  family  name  has  since  become  the 
synonym  for  the  purest  order  of  philanthropical  re- 
former. Some  of  the  men  whose  names  we  chiefly 
associate  of  later  years  with  the  cause  of  political  re- 
form, such  men  as  Charles  Earl  Grey  and  Lord  John 
Russell,  had  not  come  yet  quite  to  the  front.  Sir 
Francis  Burdett,  a  man  of  property  and  station,  was 
for  a  time  a  great  political  reformer,  and  was  for  a 
time  idolised  by  all  popular  reformers  outside  Par- 
liament. Nor  must  we  omit  from  a  list  of  those  who 
then  championed  political  reforms  the  name  of  the 
gallant  Lord  Cochrane,  afterwards  the  Earl  of  Dun- 
donald,  the  last  of  England's  great  sea-kings,  before 
the  days  of  steam  and  iron  armour  and  heavy-met- 
alled guns.  No  man  ever  served  his  country  more 
faithfully  than  Cochrane,  and  his  reward  was  a  charge 
of  fraudulent  conspiracy,  an  unsatisfactory  trial,  and 
a  cruel  degradation.  He  had  given  as  much  trouble 
to  the  French  during  the  great  war  as  any  naval 
commander  short  of  Nelson  himself.  He  sat  in  the 
House  of  Commons  for  Westminster  in  companion- 
ship with  Sir  Francis  Burdett,  and  a  more  staunch 
and  resolute  popular  reformer  never  lived.  It  is  well 
to  know  that  the  injustice  of  Cochrane's  conviction 
was  recognised  in  the  reign  of  William  IV.,  by 
whom  he  was  restored  to  his  rank  in  the  navy.  It 
remained  for  the  present  Sovereign  to  give  him 
back  all  the  honours  and  dignities  which  he  had 
earned  so  well,  and  of  which  he  had  been  so  unde- 
servedly deprived,  partly,  as  the  popular  belief 


IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  39 

went,  through  the  hatred  of  the  Regent  and  his 
Court. 

Among  the  conspicuous  reformers  of  those  early 
days  may  be  mentioned  one  who  at  the  time  acquired 
a  sort  of  fame  as ' '  Orato.r_Hunt. ' '  Hunt  was  a  dema- 
gogue in  the  genuine  sense  of  the  word,  and  had 
the  advantage,  almost  indispensable  to  a  demagogue, 
of  a  thrilling  and  tremendous  voice.  Hunt  organ- 
ised and  presided  over  all  manner  of  meetings,  out- 
of-doors  and  indoors,  to  champion  the  popular  doc- 
trines of  democracy.  He  was  elected  to  the  House 
of  Commons  later  on,  and  sat  there  for  some  years; 
but  he  did  not  maintain  there  his  reputation  as  an 
orator.  He  did  not,  to  use  a  familiar  phrase,  "  go 
down  "  with  the  House  of  Commons.  That  House 
has  a  merciless  way  of  pricking  a  bubble  reputation ; 
and  it  has  had,  for  many  generations,  at  all  events, 
the  credit  of  being  impartial  in  its  estimate  of  the 
merits  of  a  speech.  Hunt  was  a  failure  in  the  House ; 
but  he  made  a  certain  mark  on  the  political  history 
of  his  day,  and  his  name  is  even,  still  remembered  by 
those  who  are  fond  of  tracking  out  the  progress  of 
the  reform  movement  in  England.  Another  man, — 
a  very  different  kind  of  man, — whose  name  well 
deserves  to  be  remembered  among  the  best  phil- 
anthropists and  reformers  of  that  time,  was  Samuel 
Whitbread.  Whitbread  was  a  man  thoroughly  un- 
selfish, a  man  of  the  highest  character  and  the  noblest 
aims.  His  descendant,  another  Samuel  Whitbread, 
well  worthy  of  the  name,  has  but  lately  retired  from 
parliamentary  life,  and  will  always  be  remembered 
in  the  history  of  the  House  of  Commons. 


4O  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

These  were  the  more  prominent  among  the  ad- 
vanced Liberals  of  the  time.  Let  us  now  see  who 
were  the  leading  opponents  of  reform.  First  of  all 
came  George  III.,  who,  while  he  had  sense  enough 
left  to  take  any  part  in  the  rule  of  the  State,  was 
an  unteachable  and  indomitable  opponent  of  every 
movement  which  made  for  political  progress.  Next, 
perhaps,  in  constitutional  dignity  came  John  Scott, 
Lord  Eldon,  for  many  years  Lord  Chancellor  of 
England.  Lord  Eldon  was  a  man  of  very  high 
ability,  a  lawyer  of  unsurpassed  keenness  and  pro- 
fundity, a  man  of  unselfish  character  where  preju- 
dice and  passion  did  not  obtain  the  mastery  over  his 
reason  and  over  his  moral  nature.  It  is  much  to  be 
doubted  whether  the  whole  English-speaking  race 
could  just  now  produce  alive  such  a  specimen  of 
Toryism  as  Lord  Eldon  was  then.  The  one  main 
purpose  of  Eldon's  life  seemed  to  be  to  keep  the 
political  Constitution  of  England  exactly  as  it  was 
without  the  slightest  change.  He  was  actually 
steeped  and  soaked  in  the  belief  about  the  wisdom 
of  our  ancestors.  To  Lord  Eldon's  mind,  it  would 
seem  that  our  ancestors  were  a  race  of  divinely 
inspired  beings  who,  like  the  Sovereign,  could  do 
no  wrong,  and  whose  laws  it  was  out  of  the  power 
of  mortal  man  to  improve.  It  probably  did  not  oc- 
cur to  him  to  think  that  a  day  might  dawn  when, 
supposing  the  reformers  to  work  their  will  with  the 
Constitution,  the  policy  of  those  dreaded  reformers 
might  come  to  be  regarded  as  the  wisdom  of  our 
ancestors  by  some  future  Lord  Eldon.  No  doubt, 
if  any  such  idea  had  ever  intruded  upon  his  mind, 


LORD    ELDON. 
From  a  painting  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  4! 

he  would  have  driven  it  away  as  a  sacrilegious  and 
a  satanically  inspired  thought. 

No  man,  it  was  humorously  said,  ever  could  be 
so  wise  as  Lord  Thurlow,  a  former  Tory  Chancellor, 
looked.  Certainly  no  man  could  ever  be  so  wise  and 
so  virtuous  as  Lord  Eldon  believed  himself  to  be. 
So  Lord  Eldon  went  on  opposing  all  reform,  main- 
taining and  championing  every  abuse  in  the  electoral 
system  and  in  the  Court  of  Chancery,  putting  every 
obstacle  he  could  in  the  path  of  any  and  every 
movement  which  tended  to  equalise  the  political 
position  of  class  and  class,  and  treating  even  the 
most  moderate  efforts  of  Liberal  reformers  as  if  they 
were  the  work  of  recognised  enemies  of  the  human 
race.  It  was  well  said  by  a  brilliant  writer  that  it 
had  never  been  the  fortune  of  any  man  to  have  an 
opportunity  of  doing  so  much  good  as  Eldon  had 
prevented. 

The  Prime  Minister  during  a  great  part  of  Eldon's 
time  was  Lord  Liverpool,  a  man  whose  name  will 
always  be  remembered  as  that  of  one  of  the  most 
bitter  opponents  of  constitutional  reform,  even  in 
those  bitter  anti-reforming  days.  Liverpool  seemed 
to  know  of  only  one  way  by  which  a  popular  demand 
for  reform  could  be  dealt  with,  and  that  was  by  the 
passing  of  new  Acts  for  the  most  stringent  repression 
of  all  popular  demonstration.  He  was  the  author  of 
a  famous  series  of  measures  known  technically  as  the 
"  Six  Acts,"  and  by  that  title  well  remembered 
among  English  readers  of  the  present  day,  the  six 
Acts  being  a  series  of  six  legislative  enactments 
brought  in  with  the  special  and  avowed  purpose  of 


42  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

making  any  manner  of  popular  demonstration  liable 
to  be  punished  as  an  offence  against  the  Crown,  the 
constitution,  and  society  in  general.  Studying  his 
history  and  his  character  as  well  as  one  can  at  this 
distance  of  time,  it  seems  hard  indeed  to  understand 
what  claim  Lord  Liverpool  had  to  be  considered  a 
statesman  at  all.  Some  of  his  colleagues  were  worthy 
of  such  companionship.  Lord  Sidmouth,  the  Home 
Secretary,  had  once  been  well  known  as  Mr.  Adding- 
ton,  and  in  that  capacity,  through  the  influence  of 
Pitt,  had  been  raised  to  the  dignity  of  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  Some  humorous  person 
of  the  time  disposed  of  the  relative  positions  of  Pitt 
and  Addington  by  a  couple  of  lines  very  popular  in 
their  day,  which  proclaimed  that  "  Pitt  is  to  Adding- 
ton, what  London  is  to  Paddington  " — Paddington 
being  then  a  very  small  suburb  indeed.  No  doubt 
the  temptation  of  the  obvious  rhyme  had  much  to 
do  with  the  inspiration  of  the  verse ;  but  in  any  case 
the  comparison  was  well  balanced  and  effective. 
Neither  Lord  Liverpool  nor  Lord  Sidmouth  had 
ever  given  any  evidence,  we  will  not  say  of  states- 
manship, but  even  of  parliamentary  aptitude. 

Associated  with  them  was  Lord  Castlereagh,  after- 
wards Marquis  of  Londonderry,  a  man  of  much 
greater  ability  than  Sidmouth  or  Liverpool,  but  of 
yet  sterner  order  of  mind,  a  darker  and  a  fiercer 
spirit,  whose  name  is  not  likely  to  be  soon  forgotten 
in  English  political  history.  We  have  to  turn  to  the 
writings  of  the  time  in  order  to  understand  what  was 
the  hatred  with  which  Lord  Castlereagh  was  regarded 
by  most  of  the  leading  Liberals  of  his  day.  Byron 


SIR   WALTER    SCOTT. 
From  a  painting  by  Sir  William  Allan,  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE  43 

described  him  as  a  "  wretch  never  named  but  with 
curses  and  jeers."  Byron,  it  is  to  be  regretted,  as- 
sailed him  in  words  even  more  brutal  than  these — 
words  which  will  not  now  bear  quotation.  Even 
Lord  Castlereagh's  sudden  death  by  his  own  hand, 
in  a  moment  of  temporary  unsettlement,  did  not 
silence  altogether  the  voices  of  hatred.  The  story 
of  England's  nineteenth  century  brings  with  it,  at 
all  events,  the  cheering  fact  that  we  have  learnt  to 
deal  with  our  political  enemies  in  a  more  tolerant 
and  a  more  Christian-like  spirit  than  that  which 
found  only  too  much  favour  on  both  sides  of  politics 
for  many  years  after  the  time  at  which  this  volume 
begins.  No  speaker  on  a  platform,  no  writer  in  a 
newspaper,  would  be  tolerated  now  who  allowed 
himself  to  indulge  even  once  in  the  passion  of  per- 
sonal invective  against  a  political  opponent,  which 
was  common,  even  among  men  of  education  and 
position,  during  the  earlier  years  of  the  present 
century. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  rival  forces  arrayed — the 
Liberals  and  the  Conservatives,  if  we  may  transfer 
to  the  warfare  of  our  ancestors  the  phraseology  of 
the  present  day.  For  years  we  read  of  little  or 
nothing  but  the  holding  of  great  public  meetings  to 
advocate  the  cause  of  reform,  and  the  breaking  up 
of  these  meetings,  and  the  prosecution  and  im- 
prisonment of  those  who  took  a  leading  part  in 
them.  The  Government  of  the  day  believed,  or 
affected  to  believe,  that  the  meetings  were  organised 
with  the  definite  purpose  of  promoting  a  regular  revo- 
lutionary movement  all  over  the  country.  There 


44  IN  THE  WAKE   OF  THE  PEACE 

can  be  no  doubt  that  in  some  instances  there  was 
much  violence  of  language,  and  even  some  violence  of 
action,  on  the  part  of  the  agitators.  In  many  places 
a  certain  system  of  rough  drilling  was  unquestion- 
ably going  on ;  but  it  was  pleaded  on  the  part  of  the 
reformers  that  the  drilling  was  nothing  more  than  a 
natural  and  convenient  way  of  teaching  untaught 
and  awkward  men,  village  rustics  or  town  artisans, 
how  to  keep  step  in  a  procession,  and  how  to  shift 
their  quarters  according  to  the  orders  of  their  leaders 
from  a  position  which  was  found  unsuitable  to  one 
which  was  better  suited  for  the  orators  and  the  list- 
eners alike.  Charges  of  the  darkest  kind  were  un- 
doubtedly made,  and  with  much  show  of  reason, 
against  the  Government  and  its  officials.  It  was 
alleged  that  not  only  were  the  authorities  in  London 
willing  to  accept  the  evidence  of  the  basest  wretches 
who  offered  themselves  as  informers  to  disclose  re- 
volutionary plots,  but  that  emissaries  of  the  Govern- 
ment itself  had  in  many  cases  hired  and  paid  such 
creatures  to  go  about  among  the  reformers  and  try 
to  get  up  insurrectionary  plots  in  order  that  they 
might  betray  them  to  the  officers  of  the  law.  There 
certainly  did  seem  to  be  in  many  cases  only  too 
much  reason  to  believe  that  some  such  base  system 
was  one  of  the  weapons  of  the  home  Government. 


CHAPTER  IV 

GEORGE  IV 

EORGE  III.  died  in  1820,  and  as  a  matter  of 
course  George  IV.  succeeded  to  the  throne. 
The  new  King  had  ruled  so  long  during  the  eclipse 
of  his  father  that  his  formal  elevation  to  the  sovereign 
power  did  not  make  much  change  in  the  actual  con- 
ditions. George  IV.  had  been  brought  up  by  his 
father  on  narrow,  old-fashioned,  stinted  principles 
of  education.  He  had  a  greater  amount  of  natural 
ability  than  was  given  to  George  III.  ;  but  he  had 
itiot  the  elder  King's  purity  of  personal  character. 
Something  might  have  been  made  of  George  IV. 
under  a  better  and  more  liberal  sort  of  training  in 
his  early  days ;  but  the  effort  to  oppress  him  or  to 
coerce  him  into  a  pattern  son  proved,  as  under  such 
conditions  it  must  have  proved,  a  decided  failure. 
His  instincts  and  inclinations  were  generous;  and 
he  was  at  least  capable  of  understanding  a  better 
political  system  than  that  which  seemed  perfection 
to  the  dull  eyes  of  George  III.  There  must  have 
been  much  charm  of  manner  and  some  brilliancy  of 
conversation  and  style  in  George  IV.,  seeing  that  he 
became  in  his  early  days  the  close  companion  of  men 

45 


46  GEORGE  IV 

like  Fox  and  Sheridan.  It  is  out  of  all  reason  to 
suppose  that  such  men  as  Fox  and  Sheridan  could 
have  clung  to  the  companionship  of  a  mere  worth- 
less profligate  simply  because  he  happened  to  be  a 
Prince  Regent  or  a  King. 

It  is  certain  that  at  one  time  these  men  and  others 
had  great  hopes  that  the  accession  of  George  IV. 
would  prove  a  blessing  to  the  cause  of  progress  and 
to  the  nation.  The  eyes  of  the  Catholics  turned  to 
George  IV.  as  to  a  man  all  but  pledged  to  favour 
a  settlement  of  their  claims.  The  Irish  people  in 
general  believed  that  he  was  likely  to  encourage 
some  better  system  of  government  for  Ireland  than 
the  mere  rule  of  coercion  laws  and  the  stifling  of 
every  popular  utterance.  There  were,  indeed,  some 
Englishmen  of  advanced  opinions  who  never  trusted 
him  from  the  first ;  but  on  the  whole  it  may  be  taken 
for  granted  that  there  was  among  the  public  in  gen- 
eral every  disposition  to  give  him  a  fair  chance,  and 
to  accept  his  coming  as  the  hopeful  indication  of  a 
better  time.  Of  course  the  private  life  of  George 
when  Regent  had  been  one  of  utter  prodigality  and 
reckless  dissipation.  We  must  not  attempt  to  try 
the  private  life  of  a  sovereign  in  those  days  by  the 
standard  which  happily  prevails  in  our  own.  It  was 
not  at  that  time  accounted  a  disgrace,  even  to  a 
great  statesman,  to  be  a  heavy  drinker  of  wine  and 
a  reckless  gambler. 

Something  has  already  been  said  of  the  immense 
amount  of  debt  which  George  IV.  incurred  in  his 
earlier  days  ;  of  the  scandalous  manner  in  which 
the  debt  had  been  accumulated ;  and  of  the  audacity 


GEORGE   IV. 
From  a  painting  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


GEORGE  IV  47 

with  which  appeal  after  appeal  had  been  made  to 
the  House  of  Commons  for  its  liquidation.  The 
public  in  general  were  willing  to  let  bygones  be 
bygones,  so  far  as  the  doings  of  the  past  were  con- 
cerned, if  only  there  could  be  some  reasonable  hope 
of  an  improved  system  in  the  future.  Many  men 
were  inclined  to  regard  George  as  a  sort  of  Prince 
Hal,  who  might  be  counted  on  to  redeem  the  er- 
rors of  his  youth  the  moment  he  was  put  into  a 
position  of  genuine  responsibility.  They  talked  of 
him  and  of  his  companions  as  other  men  at  a  dis- 
tant day  might  have  talked  of  the  wild  Prince  and 
Poins.  Even  after  the  Prince  Regent's  years  had 
outgrown  the  limit  of  Prince  Hal's  wild-oats  season, 
excuses  were  yet  found  for  the  Prince  Regent, 
and  admirers  continued  to  look  out  for  a  brighten- 
ing future.  William  Pitt,  otherwise  the  most  aus- 
tere of  men,  drank  heavily  night  after  night; 
Charles  Fox  was  a  gambler;  Sheridan  was  an  irre- 
claimable spendthrift ;  and  after  all  why  should  the 
Prince  Regent  be  thought  so  much  worse  than  they  ? 
There  was,  however,  a  fatal  levity  about  George 
IV.  which  prevented  him  from  having  any  due  sense 
of  responsibility,  even  when  the  responsibility  began 
to  rest  most  heavily  upon  him.  When  he  came  to 
the  throne  he  had  outlived  most  of  the  friends  whose 
influence  he  might,  in  political  affairs  at  least,  have 
had  to  guide  him  along  the  right  path.  Fox  was 
long  since  dead ;  Sheridan  had  outlived  him  by  a 
few  years  only,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  Prince 
Regent  had  neglected  Sheridan  in  the  melancholy 
closing  days  of  his  ruined  life  became  a  new  public 


48  GEORGE  IV 

scandal  to  be  added  to  the  other  scandals  which  had 
accumulated  round  the  progress  of  the  Regency. 
George  IV.  had  been  married,  chiefly  from  reasons 
of  State,  to  a  German  Princess,  Caroline  of  Bruns- 
wick, nearly  connected  with  the  Royal  Family. 
The  marriage  turned  out  a  most  unhappy  alliance  in 
every  way.  George  soon  came  to  detest  the  wife 
who  had  been  to  some  extent  imposed  on  him,  partly 
by  supposed  State  advantages,  and  partly  because  it 
was  hoped  that  she  might  lead  him  into  better  ways. 
Soon  it  became  evident  that  the  pair  could  not  get 
on  together,  and  in  fact  were  nearly  irreconcilable. 
The  Queen  went  away  to  the  continent,  and  spent 
her  time  travelling  about  there.  George  was  only 
too  well  pleased  to  get  rid  of  her  companionship  on 
almost  any  terms,  and  returned  to  his  old  likings 
and  his  old  free-and-easy  habits.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  enter  into  the  details  of  the  public  scandal 
and  the  public  controversy  which  followed.  It  will 
be  enough  to  say  that  the  scandal  and  the  contro- 
versy became  a  subject  of  national  importance  when 
the  new  King  came  to  be  proclaimed  and  his  Queen 
announced  her  resolve  to  return  to  England  and 
present  herself  in  order  to  take  her  part  in  the  cere- 
monies  of  coronation. 

The  whole  country  divided  itself  into  two  hostile 
camps.  The  conduct  of  the  Queen  abroad  had  been 
made  a  subject  of  serious  charges,  which  it  is  only 
right  to  say  the  majority  of  the  English  people  did 
not  believe.  The  general  tendency  of  public  opinion 
was  to  regard  her  as  a  calumniated  and  injured 
woman ;  but  then  again  there  were  many  who  held 


QUEEN   CAROLINE. 
From  a  painting  by  James  Lonsdale,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


GEORGE  IV  49 

this  opinion  and  who  nevertheless  did  not  think  it 
right  or  wise  or  becoming  on  her  part  that  she 
should  return  and  endeavour  to  force  herself  into 
the  coronation  ceremonies  and  create  an  uproar 
and  a  tumult  throughout  the  country.  Probably 
in  the  history  of  no  modern  state  has  there  ever 
been  so  curious  an  exhibition  of  domestic  tumult 
and  scandal  as  was  afforded  by  this  extraordinary 
conflict  between  the  King  and  the  Queen.  The 
Queen  may  be  said  to  have  been  almost  literally 
ejected  from  Westminster  Abbey.  The  King  be- 
came odious  to  the  population  in  the  streets  every- 
where, while  many  of  the  great  municipal  and  public 
bodies  gave  an  enthusiastic  welcome  to  his  unfort- 
unate wife.  Brougham  championed  the  cause  of 
the  Queen  in  Parliament  and  in  public,  as  he  had 
already  done  in  the  legal  investigations. 

The  importance  of  the  whole  controversy  and  the 
whole  outrageous  scandal  rests  for  our  time  in  the 
fact  that  it  threatened  for  a  while  to  throw  the  Eng- 
lish monarchical  institution  into  utter  disrepute, 
and  that  yet  the  monarchical  institution  was  able 
to  survive  the  crisis  and  wait  for  the  coming  of  bet- 
ter days,  which  better  days  soon  came.  There  were 
moments  during  that  crisis  when  it  almost  seemed  as 
if  a  common  watchword,  or  even  a  common  catch- 
word, among  the  enemies  of  the  Monarchy,  might 
have  brought  about  a  popular  revolution ;  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  advisers  of  the  English 
people,  in  all  ranks  and  classes,  except  among  the 
very  wildest  of  brawlers,  were  men  who  persistently 
counselled  patience,  good  order,  and  a  trust  in  the 

VOL.  I. — 4 


50  GEORGE  IV 

gradual  development  of  the  Constitution.  The 
King  was  well  known,  too,  to  be  on  bad  terms 
with  his  daughter, — it  was  understood  that  he  had 
made  himself  a  domestic  tyrant  over  her;  and  this 
but  added  another  to  the  many  sources  of  the  popu- 
lar odium  which  directed  its  force  against  him. 

In  the  meantime  the  purely  political  troubles  went 
on  increasing :  popular  demonstrations  were  turned 
into  riots;  riots  led  to  prosecutions  and  imprison- 
ments. The  King's  counsellors  still  could  suggest 
nothing  better  than  repression  as  a  means  of  meet- 
ing every  popular  demand.  The  health  of  the  King 
was  not  good.  George  had  wasted  much  of  his  life 
in  dissipation,  and  people  were  prematurely  study- 
ing the  prospect  in  the  event  of  his  coming  to  an 
untimely  end.  He  had  no  son,  and  his  natural  suc- 
cessor would  have  seemed  to  be  the  Duke  of  York, 
his  next  brother;  and  the  general  opinion  about  the 
Duke  of  York,  rightly  or  wrongly,  was  that  he  had 
all  George's  bad  qualities  and  not  any  of  George's 
redeeming  characteristics.  Satire  began  to  deal 
sharply  with  George,  and  those  who  had  charge  of 
the  law  began  to  deal  sharply  with  the  satirists. 
Despite  all  that  law  could  do,  the  newspapers  would 
criticise  the  King — that  is,  the  newspapers  which 
appealed  to  the  instincts  of  the  uncourtly  crowd — 
and  the  sternest  measures  had  not  been  able  to  sup- 
press the  newspapers.  George  became  after  a  while 
reluctant  to  face  his  loving  subjects  in  public.  He 
made  of  Brighton  a  sort  of  Caprea  retreat  for  himself 
as  though  he  were  a  British  Tiberius,  and  there  he 
hid  himself  away  for  long  seasons  together  from  the 


GEORGE  IV  51 

sight  of  the  London  crowd.  His  life  had  been  at- 
tempted once  during  his  Regency — by  some  crazy 
fanatic  very  likely ;  but  it  was  not  personal  fear  which 
induced  George  to  hide  himself  from  the  sight  of  his 
people ;  he  was  only  sick  of  seeing  them — that  was  all. 
The  Peterloo  Massacre,  as  it  was  called  then  and 
for  long  afterwards,  was  the  most  momentous  event 
in  the  history  of  the  political  agitation.  Massacre, 
indeed,  is  a  very  strong  word  to  use,  and  gives  the 
idea  of  a  purposed  and  an  indiscriminate  slaughter, 
which  certainly  could  not  be  taken  as  a  calm  descrip- 
tion of  what  happened  at  Peterloo.  But  when  the 
story  of  the  event  comes  to  be  coolly  told,  it  will  be 
seen  that  there  was  by  one  means  or  another  enough 
of  an  outrage  on  public  rights  to  excuse  harsh 
phrases  in  speaking  of  the  result.  There  was  an 
idea  amongst  many  of  the  Radicals  of  Manchester 
that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to  start  Mr.  Hunt 
("  Orator  Hunt  ")  as  what  might  be  termed  the  po- 
litical delegate  for  the  district.  A  public  meeting 
was  called  by  advertisement,  inviting  the  inhabitants 
to  assemble  on  Monday,  August  9,  1819,  in  the  area 
near  St.  Peter's  Church,  for  the  purpose  of  discuss- 
ing and  adopting  a  plan  of  parliamentary  reform 
and  choosing  a  representative.  The  local  magis- 
trates issued  a  proclamation  declaring  the  meeting 
to  be  illegal,  and  warning  the  public  that  no  one 
could  attend  it  without  a  breach  of  the  law.  There- 
upon the  promoters  of  the  meeting  announced  by 
handbill  that  it  was  not  to  take  place,  but  informed 
the  public  that  a  requisition  was  to  be  addressed  to 
the  local  authorities  calling  upon  them  to  summon 


52  GEORGE  IV 

a  meeting  on  the  earliest  possible  day  to  consider 
the  most  effectual  way  of  bringing  about  a  reform  in 
the  constitution  of  the  House  of  Commons.  An 
immense  number  of  signatures  was  at  once  attached 
to  the  requisition.  This  most  reasonable  prayer 
was  promptly  and  peremptorily  refused  by  the  local 
authorities;  and  thereupon  the  promoters  of  the 
meeting  reverted  to  their  original  purpose,  and  an- 
nounced that  the  meeting  would  be  held  in  St. 
Peter's  Field  on  the  following  Monday,  the  i6th. 
The  inhabitants  of  Manchester  in  general,  even  the 
working  classes,  seemed  to  have  taken  but  little  part 
in  the  preparations ;  but  all  the  surrounding  districts 
were  active  in  sending  in  their  representative  men 
and  their  crowds  of  followers.  Orator  Hunt  was  to 
take  the  chair. 

Early  on  Monday  morning  the  crowds  began  to 
move  towards  the  place  of  meeting.  The  more 
organised  and  strictly  marshalled  part  of  the  crowd 
was  led  by  twelve  young  men,  each  holding  in  his 
hand  a  branch  of  laurel,  which  was  understood  for 
that  occasion  to  represent  the  olive  of  peace.  There 
were  two  flags  with  the  words  ' '  Liberty  and  Frater- 
nity," "  Annual  Parliaments  and  Universal  Suf- 
frage "  emblazoned  on  them  in  letters  of  gold.  The 
only  emblem  which  even  the  most  strained  con- 
struction could  describe  as  a  revolutionary  sign  was 
a  cap  of  liberty  borne  upon  a  pole.  The  cap  of 
liberty  may  no  doubt  have  recalled  to  many  uneasy 
minds  the  direful  associations  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion ;  but  nowhere  was  there  the  slightest  evidence 
or  even  suggestion  that  anything  more  was  intended 


GEORGE  IV  53 

than  the  holding  of  an  ordinary  public  meeting  to 
advocate  parliamentary  reform.  The  leaders  of  the 
demonstration  publicly  admonished  the  meeting  that 
no  insult  to  anyone  was  to  be  permitted,  and  that 
no  excuse  whatever  was  to  be  given  to  the  authori- 
ties for  any  attempted  disturbance  of  the  proceed- 
ings. It  was  distinctly  enjoined  that  if  the  peace 
officers  should  attempt  to  arrest  any  man  engaged 
in  the  demonstration  no  resistance  must  be  offered 
to  the  action  of  the  authorities. 

The  committee  who  had  charge  of  the  meeting 
had  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  that  no  sticks  or  weapons 
of  any  kind  must  be  carried  by  any  of  those  en- 
gaged in  it;  and  this  rule  was  very  generally, 
although  not  perhaps  absolutely,  obeyed.  A  num- 
ber of  married  women  and  girls  took  a  part  in  the 
procession,  moving  towards  the  ground  where  the 
meeting  was  to  be  held.  Seeing  that  the  meeting 
was  swelled  by  processions  of  men  from  the  various 
towns  and  villages  of  the  district,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  here  and  there  some  flag  or  emblem  was 
displayed  which  the  original  promoters  of  the  de- 
monstration would  not  themselves  have  sanctioned. 
There  was  a  black  flag,  for  instance,  bearing  in 
white  letters  the  words  "  Equal  Representation,  or 
Death."  This  flag,  however,  seems  to  have  moved 
the  meeting,  when  it  was  noticed,  more  to  laughter 
than  to  any  other  expression  of  emotion.  By  the 
time  the  hour  for  opening  the  proceedings  had 
nearly  arrived,  an  immense  mass  of  people  was 
gathered  together  on  the  space  which  had  been  de- 
signed for  the  holding  of  the  meeting.  A  more 


54  GEORGE  IV 

orderly  assemblage,  up  to  that  moment  and  for  some 
time  after,  could  not  possibly  have  been  seen  any- 
where, nor  when  disorder  did  afterwards  break  out 
was  it  in  any  degree  due  to  any  action  on  the  part 
of  the  crowd.  The  disorder  appears  to  have  been 
due  altogether  to  the  futile  and  mischievous  terrors 
of  the  local  authorities,  and  to  the  ill-advised  meas- 
ures which  were  taken  to  guard  against  any  possible 
breach  of  the  peace. 

The  magistrates  had  sworn  in  a  very  large  number 
of  special  constables,  and  had  called  out  the  services 
of  a  large  body  of  Hussars,  a  troop  of  Horse  Artil- 
lery with  two  cannons,  a  regiment  of  Infantry,  and 
nearly  eight  hundred  of  the  Cheshire  Yeomanry  and 
the  Manchester  Yeomanry.  The  military  forces 
were  all  disposed  in  streets  and  lanes  close  to  the 
place  of  meeting.  At  the  appointed  hour,  Hunt, 
the  chairman  of  the  meeting,  accompanied  by  a 
number  of  his  friends  and  by  a  band,  was  seen 
making  his  way  towards  the  appointed  place.  The 
band  played  the  two  popular  national  airs,  "  Rule, 
Britannia,"  and  "  God  Save  the  King";  and  it  is 
stated  that  a  large  number  of  those  attending  the 
meeting  took  off  their  hats  in  token  of  respect  for 
the  sentiment  to  which  the  music  gave  expression. 
Mr.  Hunt  and  his  friends  then  mounted  the  plat- 
form, and  it  was  proposed  in  the  most  quiet  and 
orderly  way  that  Mr.  Hunt  should  take  the  chair. 
The  motion  was  seconded,  and  carried  by  acclama- 
tion. Hunt  thereupon  advanced  to  address  the 
meeting  for  the  purpose  of  formally  opening  the 
proceedings. 


GEORGE  IV  55 

Miss  Martineau's  history  tells  us  what  happened 
then.  "  He  had  only,"  says  the  authoress,  "  ut- 
tered a  few  sentences  when  a  confused  murmur  and 
pressure,  beginning  at  one  verge  of  the  field  and 
rapidly  rolling  onwards,  brought  him  to  a  pause. 
The  soldiers  were  upon  the  people.  The  magis- 
trates, it  appears,  had  taken  it  into  their  heads  to 
issue  a  warrant  for  the  arrest  of  the  leading  promot- 
ers of  the  meeting;  the  warrant  was  given  into  the 
hands  of  the  local  Chief  Constable.  The  Chief 
Constable  declared  that  he  could  not  possibly  at- 
tempt to  execute  the  warrant  without  the  assistance 
of  the  military  ;  and  the  magistrates  thereupon 
issued  instructions  to  some  of  the  commanders  of 
the  military." 

Up  to  this  part  of  the  proceedings  there  seems 
no  contradiction  between  the  account  given  by  the 
promoters  of  the  meeting  and  that  given  by  the 
authorities.  The  uncertainty  is  as  to  how  and  why 
the  active  intervention  of  the  soldiers  began. 
There  was,  no  doubt,  confusion  of  orders  and  con- 
fusion of  ideas.  When  the  Yeomanry  were  seen 
advancing,  Hunt,  who  began  to  be  afraid  that  a 
panic  might  break  out  among  those  who  composed 
the  meeting,  called  on  the  people  to  give  three 
cheers.  The  Yeomanry  possibly  mistook  the  cheers 
for  shouts  of  defiance,  and  possibly  in  some  way  or 
another  got  it  into  their  heads  that  they  were  ordered 
to  advance.  They  did  advance,  at  all  events,  wav- 
ing their  swords,  and  apparently  with  the  intention 
of  dispersing  the  meeting;  but  of  course,  as  the 
number  of  the  Yeomanry  was  comparatively  small 


56  GEORGE  IV 

and  the  number  of  the  crowd  was  immense,  the  only 
immediate  result  was  that  the  Yeomanry  got  thor- 
oughly swallowed  up  in  the  crowd  and  could  neither 
advance  nor  retreat.  Just  at  this  moment,  as  luck 
would  have  it,  the  two  squadrons  of  Hussars  came 
within  sight,  and  soon  reached  the  verge  of  the 
crowd.  Thereupon  some  of  the  magistrates,  who 
were  watching  the  proceedings,  seemed  to  have 
thoroughly  lost  their  heads.  The  impression  of 
some  of  them  certainly  was  that  the  Yeomanry  were 
being  overwhelmed  and  trampled  down,  and  they 
gave  to  the  officer  in  command  of  the  Hussars  the 
frantic  order  to  disperse  the  crowd.  The  trumpet 
was  sounded,  and  the  cavalry  charged  the  multitude. 
The  multitude  was  in  no  condition  whatever  to  offer 
any  effective  resistance.  Even  if  those  who  com- 
posed the  meeting  had  been  prepared  or  inclined  to 
resist,  which  they  certainly  were  not,  the  manner  in 
which  they  were  helplessly  packed  together  would 
have  rendered  any  sort  of  resistance  impossible. 

A  general  stampede  set  in ;  the  Hussars,  it  is  be- 
lieved, in  general  used  only  the  flats  of  their  swords 
against  the  people,  but,  as  may  easily  be  imagined  in 
such  a  case,  the  edge  of  the  sword  was  sometimes 
used,  both  by  cavalry  and  by  Yeomanry.  There  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  soldiers  acted  with  any 
deliberate  and  cruel  purpose ;  but  when  a  collision 
takes  place  between  a  small  body  of  troops  and  a 
vast  number  of  civilians  whose  only  resistance  is  in 
the  mere  bulk  of  their  crowd,  the  soldier  striving  to 
make  his  way  onwards  is  sometimes  tempted  to  use 
the  edge  of  his  weapon  in  order  to  clear  a  passage. 


GEORGE  IV  57 

In  ten  minutes  from  the  first  movement  of  the  Yeo- 
manry the  meeting  had  broken  up  in  utter  confusion ; 
the  people  had  fled  this  way,  that  way,  and  the 
other ;  and  the  field  was  almost  completely  deserted, 
except  for  the  bodies,  some  dead  and  some  wounded, 
which  still  held  the  ground. 

Some  pitiful,  pathetic  evidences  of  a  struggle  also 
remained  behind ;  the  ground  in  several  places  was 
strewn  with  hats,  caps,  bonnets,  coats,  shawls,  torn 
skirts,  torn  petticoats,  shoes,  and  slippers,  which  fu- 
gitives had  left  behind  them  in  the  stress  and  press- 
ure of  the  flight.  The  actual  deaths  were  not  many, 
when  one  considers  the  density  of  the  crowd  and  the 
efforts  of  the  cavalry  to  clear  their  way  through, 
although  perhaps  the  very  density  of  the  crowd  may 
have  been  the  principal  reason  why  the  deaths  were 
not  more  numerous.  Only  five  or  six  persons  appear 
to  have  been  killed,  and  of  these  one  was  a  special 
constable,  and  one  belonged  to  the  Manchester  Yeo- 
manry, both  apparently  knocked  off  their  horses  and 
ridden  down  in  the  confusion.  About  thirty  wounded 
persons  were  carried  to  the  hospitals  that  day,  and 
about  forty  more  had  their  wounds  looked  to  and 
dressed,  and  were  then  able  to  return  to  their  own 
homes.  Others,  it  is  believed,  were  wounded  who 
did  not  present  themselves  at  any  hospital  or  infirm- 
ary. This  is  but  natural,  and  is  just  what  occurs 
on  all  similar  occasions.  At  every  great  political 
gathering  a  number  of  men  are  sure  to  attend  whose 
hearts  are  not  particularly  set  on  the  objects  of  the 
popular  meeting,  and  whose  first  impulse,  if  there 
be  disturbance,  is  to  endeavour  to  escape  from  being 


58  GEORGE  IV 

identified  with  any  of  the  proceedings.  Such  men 
would  be  very  likely,  even  if  they  had  received  bodily 
injuries  at  St.  Peter's  Field,  to  make  as  little  noise 
about  the  matter  as  possible.  They  would  betake 
themselves  to  their  homes  privately;  would  have 
their  hurts  seen  after  in  their  own  houses;  and 
would  try  to  go  about  their  ordinary  occupations 
next  day  as  if  nothing  had  happened  in  which  they 
had  any  personal  concern. 

It  did  not  suit  many  a  man  in  those  days  to  give 
his  employer  any  reason  for  suspecting  that  he  had 
been  taking  a  part,  however  passive  and  innocent, 
in  the  business  which  ended  in  the  massacre  of 
Peterloo.  Looking  back  now  at  the  whole  story 
of  the  day's  events,  it  is  easy  enough  to  see  that  the 
massacre,  if  massacre  it  may  still  be  called,  was  not 
premeditated  on  the  part  of  the  magistrates  or  on 
the  part  of  the  troops  whom  they  called  in  so  mis- 
taken a  way  to  their  assistance.  The  officers  in 
command  of  the  troops,  and  the  troops  themselves, 
were,  of  course,  entirely  innocent  of  any  desire  to 
massacre  anybody.  In  almost  every  case  in  the 
modern  history  of  England  in  which  the  soldiers 
have  come  into  collision  with  the  populace  and  a 
calamity  has  been  the  result,  the  calamity  has  not 
been  caused  by  any  wanton  action  on  the  part  of 
the  soldiers  or  by  those  immediately  in  command 
of  them,  but  by  some  confusion  and  blundering  on 
the  part  of  those  who  represented  the  civil  authori- 
ties. In  this  case  the  magistrates  undoubtedly 
blundered.  They  blundered  in  their  notion  of 
arresting  the  leaders  of  the  crowd  at  the  moment 


GEORGE  IV  59 

and  on  the  spot,  and  they  blundered  also  in  the 
measures  which  they  took  to  have  the  arrests  accom- 
plished. But  it  does  not  appear  that  they  had  any 
set  desire  to  bring  about  a  collision  between  the 
military  force  and  the  peaceful  citizens  assembled 
at  the  meeting.  On  the  other  hand,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  the  meeting  was  perfectly  peaceful, 
orderly,  and  legitimate. 

In  our  days,  when  a  portion  of  Hyde  Park  has 
been  specially  set  aside  for  the  purpose  of  Sunday 
meetings  in  the  open  air,  no  question  could  arise 
such  as  that  which  bewildered  the  brains  of  the 
Manchester  magistrates;  but  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  at  that  time  the  law  was  in  a  very 
different  condition.  It  was  the  opinion  of  some 
great  lawyers  that  the  men  who  got  up  the  meet- 
ing were  liable  to  be  tried  on  a  charge  of  high 
treason.  Hunt  and  some  of  his  comrades  were  in 
fact  put  upon  trial  on  just  such  a  charge.  Lord 
Eldon,  who,  with  all  his  faults,  was  undoubtedly  a 
great  lawyer,  was  himself  of  opinion  that  the  charge 
of  high  treason  could  be  maintained  according  to 
law,  and  that  also  if  it  could  be  maintained  according 
to  evidence,  then,  but  not  otherwise,  the  magistrates 
were  quite  justified  in  acting  as  they  did ;  for  Lord 
Eldon  distinctly  laid  it  down  that  numbers  consti- 
tuted force,  and  force  terror,  and  terror  illegality. 
Now  nothing  can  be  more  clear  than  this  declara- 
tion; and  this  declaration,  this  construction  of  the 
law,  is  what  makes  the  Peterloo  meeting  an  epoch 
in  English  modern  history.  Any  large  public  meet- 
ing whatever,  held  in  the  open  air  with  the  object  of 


60  GEORGE  IV 

bringing  about  a  reform  in  any  part  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, was  an  act  of  high  treason,  because  numbers 
constituted  force,  and  force  terror,  and  terror  illegal- 
ity. It  is  very  likely  that  Lord  Eldon  was  literally 
correct  in  his  application  of  the  existing  law;  but 
the  law  was  never  heard  of  in  such  interpretation 
after  the  days  of  the  Peterloo  meeting. 

The  indictment  against  Hunt  and  his  companions 
for  an  act  of  high  treason  broke  down;  the  judges 
would  not  have  it,  and  it  had  to  be  given  up.  The 
prisoners  were  then  put  upon  their  trial  for  a  dis- 
turbance of  the  public  peace,  and  were  sentenced 
to  various  periods  of  imprisonment.  Hunt  himself 
spent  some  two  years  in  jail,  to  atone  for  his  offence 
as  a  disturber  of  the  public  peace.  The  conduct  of 
the  magistrates  received  the  formal  approval  of  the 
Government,  although  Lord  Eldon  himself,  in  a 
letter  which  has  since  been  published,  declared 
that  the  magistrates  would  have  been  to  blame 
if  the  holding  of  the  meeting  could  not  be  shown 
to  be  an  act  of  high  treason.  The  important  fact 
for  the  modern  reader  is  that,  according  to  Lord 
Eldon's  reading  of  the  law,  any  public  meeting 
whatever  which  assembled  in  large  numbers  would 
be  guilty  of  an  act  of  high  treason ;  and  that  even  in 
Lord  Eldon's  time  that  interpretation  was  not  up- 
held by  those  who  had  to  lay  down  the  law.  Had 
Lord  Eldon's  declaration  prevailed,  the  right  of 
public  meeting  might  have  been  denied  for  years 
and  years,  and  any  large  assemblage  to  demand  a 
reform  of  any  law  would  be  liable  to  forcible  disper- 
sion at  the  command  of  a  civil  magistrate.  That 


GEORGE  IV  6l 

position  was  not  maintained — it  thoroughly  broke 
down;  and  therefore  an  opening  was  made  for 
peaceful  popular  agitation,  such  as  it  might  not 
have  had  for  years  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  disturb- 
ance at  Peterloo.  Thus  the  poor  muddle-headed 
magistrates  who  issued  the  order  for  the  bringing  up 
of  the  troops  did  more  to  help  on  the  coming  agita- 
tion for  reform  than  the  eloquence  of  Orator  Hunt 
could  ever  have  accomplished.  It  is  a  somewhat 
interesting  historical  fact,  that  on  the  scene  of  the 
Peterloo  meeting  was  afterwards  erected  the  great 
Free  Trade  Hall  of  Manchester,  the  Free  Trade  Hall 
which  Richard  Cobden  and  John  Bright  used  as  the 
theatre  for  so  many  a  peaceful  agitation,  and  from 
the  platform  of  which  nothing  seditious  or  anarchi- 
cal, or  even  revolutionary,  was  ever  given  forth. 
Thus,  to  adopt  the  words  of  Shakespeare,  did  the 
"  whirligig  of  time  bring  about  the  revenges  "  of  the 
Peterloo  meeting. 

We  have  thought  it  well  to  tell  this  story  of  Peter- 
loo at  some  length,  because  of  the  fact  that  it  marks 
the  close  of  one  part  of  the  nineteenth  century's 
story  and  the  opening  of  another  part.  The  calam- 
ity was,  of  course,  in  itself  to  be  deeply  lamented. 
But  many  a  greater  calamity  has  happened  by  acci- 
dent at  a  public  gathering,  and  has  left  behind  it 
nothing  for  posterity  to  ponder  seriously  over.  The 
fall  of  a  platform  or  a  gallery,  the  panic  caused  by 
an  alarm  of  fire,  has  often  had  its  list  of  killed  and 
wounded  far  longer  than  that  which  belongs  to  the 
massacre  of  Peterloo.  But  nothing  came,  or  was  to 
come,  so  far  as  the  outer  public  were  concerned, 


62  GEORGE  IV 

from  the  results  of  such  an  accident.  They  carried 
with  them  no  national  lesson ;  they  marked  no  his- 
torical crisis;  they  made  no  monument  to  a  dead 
past.  The  Peterloo  calamity  was  in  a  great  measure 
itself  an  accident.  But  for  the  confusion  in  the 
minds  of  the  magistrates,  nothing  might  have  come 
of  it,  and  the  next  public  meeting,  and  the  next  and 
next  for  many  long  years,  might  have  been  liable  to 
the  same  interruption,  the  same  dispersion,  and  the 
same  shedding  of  blood. 

The  Peterloo  calamity,  although  in  itself,  to  a 
certain  extent,  only  an  accident,  yet  differed  from 
other  such  accidents  as  those  we  have  just  men- 
tioned in  the  fact  that  it  brought  about  a  new  read- 
ing of  the  law  for  practical  application  to  the  business 
of  life  in  England.  Of  course  there  have  been 
meetings  prevented  and  meetings  suppressed  since 
that  time;  and,  as  we  shall  find  in  going  on  with 
this  story,  it  has  been  left  in  the  power  of  the 
authorities,  in  certain  parts  of  the  kingdom,  to 
prohibit  absolutely  the  holding  of  a  public  meeting 
in  a  certain  place  and  under  particular  circumstan- 
ces. But  when  such  official  acts  are  allowed  and 
authorised,  it  is  only  where  the  operations  of  the 
ordinary  law  are  supposed  to  be  for  the  time  sus- 
pended. England  gained  by  the  results  of  the 
Peterloo  meeting  the  certainty  that  where  the  ordin- 
ary law  still  prevails  peaceful  men  may  assemble  in 
any  number  of  thousands  to  make  peaceful  demands 
for  constitutional  reform,  and  no  one  shall  gainsay 
their  right  of  public  demonstration  and  of  free 
speech. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   CATO    STREET   CONSPIRACY 

ONE  of  the  conspiracies  of  that  season,  when  the 
air  was  alive  with  the  rumours  of  conspiracy, 
was  a  genuine  plot  and  a  murderous  plot,  and  there- 
fore deserves  an  especial  notice.  This  was  the  Cato 
Street  Conspiracy,  as  it  was  called,  a  name  of  fear 
to  many  succeeding  generations.  For  no  short  space 
of  time  a  mere  allusion  to  the  Cato  Street  Conspiracy 
was  believed  by  honest  Tories  to  be  quite  enough  to 
damp  the  enthusiasm  of  the  most  innocent  reformer. 
The  agitation  in  favour  of  important  changes  in  the 
system  of  government  had  greatly  fallen  off  for  a 
while.  Nothing  seemed  to  be  coming  of  the  move- 
ment; the  followers  grew  dissatisfied,  and  blamed 
their  leaders  for  their  supposed  lack  of  activity ;  de- 
spondency and  disappointment  were  abroad  among 
the  ranks;  the  funds  ceased  to  come  in;  and  the 
whole  organisation  seemed  for  the  moment  likely  to 
collapse.  It  was  just  then — in  1819 — that  the  mas- 
sacre of  Peterloo,  as  it  was  called,  and  the  subse- 
quent action  of  the  Government  in  reference  to  it, 
interposed  to  give  a  new  stimulus  to  popular  agita- 
tion, and  to  fan  again  into  a  burning  flame  the 

63 


64  THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY 

smouldering  embers  of  popular  passion.  One  of  the 
indirect  results  of  the  Government's  ill-advised  ac- 
tion was  the  Cato  Street  Conspiracy. 

The  conspiracy,  with  all  its  horrors,  was  a  small 
affair  in  itself,  confined  to  a  very  limited  number  of 
conspirators,  and,  until  its  actual  outbreak,  as  com- 
pletely unknown  to  the  vast  majority  of  the  reform 
agitators  as  it  was  to  the  vast  majority  of  the  gen- 
eral and  unconcerned  public.  Indeed,  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  there  would  have  been  any  Cato 
Street  Conspiracy  at  all  but  for  the  working  of  the 
abominable  spy  system,  which  was  undoubtedly 
abetted  by  the  officials  of  the  Home  Office. 

The  first  information  of  the  existence  of  any  such 
conspiracy  was  given  to  the  Home  Office  by  a  man 
named  Edwards,  who  kept  a  small  shop  at  Eton. 
Edwards  professed  to  have  discovered  a  desperate 
plot  for  the  assassination  of  the  King's  Ministers, 
and  indeed  it  may  be  assumed  of  the  King  himself. 
The  story  was  naturally  told  at  once  to  Lord  Sid- 
mouth,  the  Home  Secretary;  and  Edwards  was 
promptly  taken  into  the  pay  of  the  Home  Office. 
Whether  Edwards  actually  started  the  conspiracy 
itself  it  would  now  be  impossible  to  say ;  but  it  is 
certain  that  he  and  other  agents  of  a  similar  charac- 
ter did  go  about  London  and  the  country,  wherever 
they  found  discontented  men,  and  whisper  to  them 
of  a  tremendous  plot  to  wreak  a  just  vengeance  on 
the  King's  Ministers  and  to  form  a  starting-point 
for  a  great  popular  revolution.  Very  few  men  in- 
deed were  foolish  enough  to  be  persuaded  to  join 
this  preposterous  conspiracy;  but  it  had  from  the 


THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY  65 

beginning,  or  at  all  events  it  had  after  the  sedulous 
efforts  of  the  Government  spies,  the  leadership  of  a 
man  named  Thistlewood,  the  very  sort  of  man  whom 
Fate  and  his  own  fault  had  marked  out  for  such  a 
part. 

Thistlewood  was  just  a  type  of  the  creature  who 
is  found  during  the  progress  of  all  great  popular 
movements,  who  belongs  to  the  dregs  of  the  agita- 
tion, and  is  by  the  hand  of  Nature  quoted  and  signed 
to  mix  himself  up  in  deeds  of  blood.  Perhaps  he 
was  rather  a  crazy  fanatic  than  an  ordinary  assassin  ; 
but  it  is  certain  that  a  spirit  of  private  vengeance 
and  hate  urged  him  in  his  later  days,  much  more 
than  any  desire,  however  wild  and  incoherent,  for 
the  emancipation  of  any  downtrodden  class.  He 
had  been  concerned  in  other  agitations,  and  had 
been  put  on  his  trial  in  one  instance  and  acquitted. 
Perhaps  if  he  had  not  been  crazy,  he  might  have 
been  contented  with  the  result;  but  he  instantly 
blossomed  forth  into  that  most  dangerous  growth, 
a  man  with  a  grievance.  He  took  the  extraordinary 
course  of  sending  a  challenge  to  Lord  Sidmouth. 
Perhaps  Lord  Sidmouth  might  have  done  well  if  he 
had  taken  no  notice  whatever  of  the  challenge ;  but 
of  course  there  are  laws  for  the  protection  of  the 
Ministers  of  the  Crown  from  invitations  to  single 
combat,  and  Thistlewood's  mock-heroic  performance 
was  punished  by  a  year's  imprisonment.  When  his 
time  of  incarceration  was  over,  he  came  out  a  thor- 
oughly desperate  man.  He  got  a  few  creatures 
about  him,  as  ignorant  and  as  desperate  as  himself, 
and  he  initiated  them  into  his  plot,  which  was  to 

VOL.  i. — 5 


66  THE  CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY 

murder  the  Ministers,  seize  on  the  Bank,  the  Man- 
sion House,  and  the  Tower  of  London,  and  forth- 
with set  up  a  provisional  government. 

One  of  the  wild  fantasies  among  the  discontented 
desperadoes  of  that  time  was  the  notion  that  by  capt- 
uring the  Bank  and  the  Mansion  House  and  the 
Tower  of  London  they  could  establish  a  secure  basis 
for  the  construction  of  a  new  system  of  government 
on  the  principle  of  "  Down  with  everything!  "  It 
seems  hard  to  think  now  that  even  men  like  Thistle- 
wood  and  his  little  gang  of  conspirators  could  have 
believed  for  a  moment  in  the  possibility  of  such  a 
scheme ;  but  Thistlewood  and  some  of  his  associates 
undoubtedly  did  believe  in  it,  and  they  were  for 
going  to  work  at  once,  and  beginning  with  the  as- 
sassination. Some  delays,  however,  intervened, 
amongst  others  the  delay  caused  by  the  death  of 
the  King  and  the  Duke  of  Kent  and  the  uncertainty 
as  to  whether  the  accession  of  George  IV.  might 
not  rid  the  country  of  the  old  Tory  Ministers  whom 
they  hated.  After  a  while  the  course  of  events 
furnished  them  with  an  opportunity  which  seemed 
to  be  sent  by  Fate  for  their  very  purpose.  The 
man  Edwards,  the  spy  in  the  pay  of  the  Home 
Office,  obtained  information  for  them  that  there  was 
to  be  a  Cabinet  dinner  on  the  next  day  at  the  house 
of  Lord  Harrowby.  There,  then,  was  the  whole 
murder  made  easy.  Some  of  the  conspirators  were 
to  watch  round  Lord  Harrowby's  house;  one  was 
to  knock  at  the  door  and  send  in  a  note  while  the 
statesmen  were  at  dinner,  and  then  the  conspirators 
were  to  rush  in  a  body  through  the  open  door  and 


THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY  67 

to  massacre  their  enemies.  So  elaborate  and  so 
comically  dramatic  were  their  preparations,  that 
some  of  the  conspirators,  it  seems,  came  provided 
with  bags  in  which  to  carry  away  the  heads  of  Lord 
Sidmouth  and  Lord  Castlereagh,  the  two  men  espe- 
cially hated  by  Thistlewood  and  most  of  his  friends. 
The  whole  scheme  turned  out  a  grotesque  failure. 
One  of  the  conspiring  gang  gave  Lord  Harrowby 
warning  of  what  was  in  preparation.  Lord  Har- 
rowby showed  prudence  and  judgment ;  he  did  not 
seem  to  take  any  notice  of  the  information  given  to 
him,  and  the  preparations  for  his  dinner  went  on  in 
the  natural  way,  only,  perhaps,  a  little  more  osten- 
tatiously. When  the  hour  for  dining  came,  and  the 
guests  did  not  come,  the  conspirators  who  were  set 
to  watch  the  house  took  no  notice  of  the  fact.  It 
so  chanced  that  the  Archbishop  of  York,  who  lived 
next  door,  happened  to  be  giving  a  dinner  party  that 
same  evening,  and  some  of  the  conspirators  who 
were  set  to  keep  watch  on  Lord  Harrowby's  house 
were  for  a  time  puzzled  and  mystified  by  the  rapid 
and  frequent  arrival  of  carriages.  It  had  been  ar- 
ranged that,  at  a  certain  appointed  hour,  the  men 
who  were  to  do  the  actual  deeds  of  murder  were  to 
be  warned  that  the  time  was  arriving,  and  were 
to  hasten  to  the  spot.  These  men  were  now  as- 
sembled in  a  stable  and  a  room  or  two  above  it  in 
Cato  Street,  off  the  Edgeware  Road,  near  Hyde 
Park.  By  the  time  the  conspirators  entrusted  with 
the  keeping  of  watch  over  Lord  Harrowby's  house 
had  come  to  make  up  their  minds  that  there  was  to 
be  no  Ministerial  dinner  there  after  all,  it  was  quite 


68  THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY 

too  late  to  give  warning  to  their  colleagues  in  Cato 
Street.  These  colleagues  had,  indeed,  been  warned 
already.  The  police  had  turned  out  and  the  soldiers 
had  been  sent  for;  but  the  soldiers  were  not  prompt 
in  getting  to  the  scene  of  action — there  had  been 
some  delay  about  the  giving  of  proper  orders;  in 
fact,  it  was  a  night  of  mistakes  on  the  part  alike  of 
authority  and  assassination.  The  police,  without 
the  assistance  of  the  soldiers,  endeavoured  to  capt- 
ure the  men  in  Cato  Street ;  but  Thistlewood  and 
about  a  dozen  others  were  able  to  make  their  escape 
before  the  soldiers  came  on  the  ground ;  and  Thistle- 
wood  stabbed  one  of  the  policemen  through  the 
heart.  When  the  soldiers  came  at  last,  they  captured 
the  few  remaining  conspirators,  some  nine  or  ten  in 
number,  with  their  weapons,  their  ammunition,  and 
no  doubt  the  formidable  bags  in  which  the  heads 
of  murdered  Ministers  were  to  be  securely  stowed 
away. 

The  London  Gazette,  the  official  publication,  which 
came  out  next  morning,  contained  the  proclamation 
of  a  reward  of  ^1000  for  the  capture  of  Thistlewood. 
London  was  thrown  for  the  time  into  profound  con- 
sternation ;  the  general  conviction  was  that  the  Cato 
Street  movement  was  but  the  first  act  of  some  vast 
revolutionary  organisation,  which  the  very  fact  of 
a  first  failure  might  render  only  the  more  ferocious 
and  desperate.  But  before  the  alarmed  citizens  had 
time  to  get  hold  of  the  Gazette  the  principal  con- 
spirator was  already  in  the  hands  of  those  whom  he 
would  himself  probably  have  described  as  the  min^ 
ions  of  a  despotic  government.  When  Thistlewood 


THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY  69 

escaped  from  the  garret  in  Cato  Street,  he  quietly 
went  to  the  house  of  a  friend  at  Moorfields,  and 
there  got  a  night's  lodging  and  betook  himself  to 
bed.  He  was  still  unheroically  slumbering  when  he 
was  aroused  before  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  by 
the  emissaries  of  the  law,  and  there  was  an  end  of 
the  Cato  Street  Conspiracy. 

That,  at  least,  was  the  end  of  the  conspiracy. 
The  conspirators  had  yet  to  be  dealt  with.  While 
they  were  lying  in  prison  awaiting  their  trial,  the 
King,  who  had  been  in  bad  health  at  Brighton,  sent 
up  for  delivery  his  speech  on  the  dissolution  of  Par- 
liament on  the  1 8th  of  March.  It  was  natural,  of 
course,  that  the  King  and  his  Ministers  should  make 
the  very  most  of  what  had  happened ;  but  still  the 
passage  from  the  speech  which  referred  to  the  Cato 
Street  business  was  couched  in  such  language  as 
might  have  been  applied  to  some  widely  spread,  vast 
conspiracy,  gravely  imperilling  all  the  best  institu- 
tions of  the  country,  and  not  to  the  insane  and  fan- 
tastic plot  of  a  handful  of  men,  wholly  unsupported 
by  any  following  worth  mentioning,  in  an  obscure 
corner  of  London.  "  Deeply  as  his  Majesty  laments 
that  designs  and  practices  such  as  those  you  have 
been  recently  called  upon  to  repress  should  have 
existed  in  this  free  and  happy  country,  we  cannot 
sufficiently  commend  the  prudence  and  firmness 
with  which  you  directed  your  attention  to  the  means 
of  counteracting  them."  Then  the  speech  goes  on 
to  say:  "  If  any  doubt  had  remained  as  to  the  na- 
ture of  those  principles  by  which  the  peace  and  hap- 
piness of  the  nation  were  so  seriously  menaced,  or 


7<D  THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY 

of  the  excesses  to  which  they  were  likely  to  lead, 
the  flagrant  and  sanguinary  conspiracy  which  has 
lately  been  detected  must  open  the  eyes  of  the  most 
incredulous,  and  must  vindicate  to  the  whole  world 
the  justice  and  expediency  of  those  measures  to 
which  you  thought  it  necessary  to  resort  in  defence 
of  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  the  kingdom." 

The  fact  is  that  the  kind  of  measures  to  which  the 
King's  speech  especially  refers  had  been  the  very 
means  of  driving  senseless  men  on  to  the  crimes 
which  the  laws  condemn.  The  manner  in  which  the 
Manchester  meeting  was  dealt  with,  and  the  protec- 
tion which  the  law  afforded  to  such  measures,  be- 
came the  stimulating  impulse  to  the  crimes  of  which 
this  notorious  gang  were  guilty.  It  may  now  be 
taken  as  an  axiom  in  the  principles  of  government, 
that  over-repression  of  popular  agitation  inevitably 
leads  to  conspiracy. 

While  Thistlewood  was  still  in  prison  and  untried, 
an  absurd  plot  suddenly  exploded  in  Scotland,  a 
country  where  one  might  have  thought  there  was  the 
least  possible  likelihood  of  a  merely  fantastic  con- 
spiracy finding  a  home.  This  business  began  with 
the  posting  of  proclamations — no  one  knew  by  whom 
they  were  posted — on  the  walls  all  over  Glasgow, 
inviting  the  people  to  prepare  themselves  for  the 
accomplishment  of  a  revolution  and  commanding  a 
cessation  of  all  labour.  The  very  fact  that  nobody 
knew  who  had  posted  the  proclamations  gave  them 
an  additional  importance  ;  everybody  looked  to 
everybody  else  for  explanation ;  and  as  no  one  had 
any  explanation  to  give,  the  natural  conclusion  in 


THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY  Jl 

alarmist  minds  was  that  there  must  be  some  deeply 
rooted,  wide-spread  revolutionary  movement  going 
on.  Nothing  more  terrible  in  the  way  of  revolution 
made  itself  seen  than  the  appearance  of  a  body  of 
armed  men,  who  called  on  one  of  the  Stirlingshire 
Yeomanry  to  surrender  his  weapon.  The  man  thus 
challenged  contrived  to  get  back  to  Kilsyth,  near 
which  the  armed  conspirators  had  made  their  appear- 
ance, and  he  gave  the  alarm.  A  small  body  of 
troops  was  despatched,  and  they  soon  came  upon 
the  conspirators,  who  refused  to  surrender,  and  fired 
some  shots,  but  were  very  soon  disarmed  and  over- 
powered. Some  of  the  conspirators  were  wounded, 
and  about  nineteen  arrests  were  made,  and  the  colli- 
sion obtained  the  high-sounding  name  of  the  battle 
of  Bonnymuir. 

Many  of  the  unfortunate  creatures  who  joined 
in  this  armed  movement  had  been  deluded  into 
the  belief  that  a  great  rebellion  was  coming  on; 
that  an  army  of  rebels,  several  thousand  strong, 
was  within  hail;  and  that  they  had  better,  for 
their  own  safety,  take  part  at  once  with  the  forces 
of  revolution.  Nothing  came  of  the  whole  busi- 
ness, which  even  in  those  days  of  severity  called 
for  no  more  than  a  light  sentence  on  the  few  who 
were  convicted  and  whom  it  was  thought  worth 
while  to  punish  at  all.  After  the  battle  of  Bonny- 
muir, Scotland  stood  just  where  it  did  before.  Yet 
the  alarm  that  was  spread  through  the  country  was 
as  genuine  and  deep  as  it  was  vague  and  unfounded. 
Miss  Martineau,  in  her  History  of  the  Peace,  has 
given  a  description,  at  once  amusing  and  instructive, 


72  THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY 

of  the  state  of  public  feeling  in  many  districts  after 
the  Cato  Street  Conspiracy.  "  Those,"  she  says, 
"  who  are  old  enough  to  have  a  distinct  recollection 
of  those  times,  are  astonished  now  to  think  how 
great  was  the  panic  which  could  exist  without  any 
evidence  at  all;  how  prodigious  were  the  Radical 
forces,  which  were  always  heard  of  but  never  seen ; 
how  every  shabby-  and  hungry-looking  man  met  on 
the  road  was  pronounced  a  Radical;  how  country 
gentlemen,  well  armed,  scoured  the  fields  and  lanes, 
and  met  on  heaths  to  fight  the  enemy  who  never 
came;  and  how,  even  in  the  midst  of  towns,  young 
ladies  carried  heavy  planks  and  ironing-boards  to 
barricade  windows,  in  preparation  for  sieges  from 
thousands  of  rebels,  whose  footfall  was  long  listened 
for  in  vain,  through  the  darkness  of  the  night." 
Miss  Martineau  winds  up  her  description  by  telling 
us  how  this  imaginary  state  of  the  times  was  used 
by  the  alarmists  as  an  argument  against  popular 
education,  among  other  purposes  to  which  it  was 
turned,  the  plea  being  that  the  leaders  of  the  Radi- 
cals, having  circulated  proclamations,  must  be  able 
to  write,  and  that  this  fact  sufficiently  proved  the 
necessity  of  keeping  the  discontented  dumb. 

On  the  2Oth  of  April,  Thistlewood  and  four  of 
his  accomplices  were  found  guilty  and  condemned 
to  death.  Their  trial  had  lasted  three  days,  and  the 
trial  only  made  it  more  and  more  clear  that  the  con- 
spiracy had  been  confined  to  a  very  limited  number 
of  half-crazy  creatures.  On  the  1st  of  May,  Thistle- 
wood  and  the  other  four  were  executed.  The  in- 
former Edwards,  who  had  done  so  much  to  get  up 


THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY  73 

the  conspiracy,  was  never  punished,  and  was  never 
even  brought  to  trial.  Some  attempts  were  made 
in  the  House  of  Commons  to  press  the  Government 
into  a  prosecution  of  this  man,  and  the  subject,  in- 
deed, was  brought  forward  more  than  once ;  those 
who  pressed  for  the  prosecution  undertaking  to  pro- 
duce ample  evidence  to  prove  his  connection  with 
the  plot.  The  Government,  however,  would  do 
nothing  in  the  matter,  and  Edwards,  to  use  a  phrase 
of  Carlyle's,  "  drops  through  the  tissue  of  our  his- 
tory." It  is  of  importance  to  dwell  at  some  length 
on  that  story  of  the  Cato  Street  Conspiracy.  From 
that  day  to  the  present,  what  a  distance  we  have 
traversed !  Not  for  half  a  century  has  any  serious 
charge  been  made  against  a  Ministry  of  actually 
having  fomented  seditions  by  the  aid  of  hired  agents 
for  the  mere  purpose  of  suppressing  the  movements 
and  dealing  heavy  punishment  to  their  leaders,  and 
thus  striking  terror  among  the  discontented,  and 
forcing  them  to  believe  that  they  had  better  bear 
their  sufferings  in  private  and  in  silence  than  bring 
down  the  vengeance  of  the  law  by  any  public  agita- 
tion of  their  wrongs.  It  cannot  be  doubted  by  any 
calm  observer  that  the  policy  of  Lord  Liverpool  and 
Lord  Sidmouth  and  the  Six  Acts  were  moving 
agents  in  the  creation  of  that  force  of  public  opinion 
which  carried  the  first  great  Reform  Bill  through  the 
English  Parliament. 

Many  years  after  the  date  of  Peterloo  and  Cato 
Street  and  the  battle  of  Bonnymuir,  Lord  John 
Russell,  who  conducted  that  Reform  Bill  through 
the  House  of  Commons,  spoke  in  a  passage  of  sin- 


74  THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY 

gular  eloquence  and  wisdom  against  the  futility  and 
the  folly  of  endeavouring  to  prevent  agitation  by 
the  force  of  stern  legal  repression.  He  showed 
that  agitation  springs  from  grievance;  that  the 
grievance  is  sometimes  too  strong  for  men  to  bear 
in  silence;  and  he  quoted  from  the  immortal  pas- 
sage in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  in  which  the  starving 
apothecary  is  asked,  "  Art  thou  so  bare  and  full 
of  wretchedness,  and  fearest  to  die  ?  "  is  reminded 
that  "  the  world  is  not  thy  friend,  nor  the  world's 
law,"  and  is  therefore  bidden  to  "be  not  poor, 
but  break  it."  Such,  indeed,  would  naturally  have 
been  the  spirit  of  every  appeal  addressed  by  each 
Thistlewood,  and,  lower  still,  by  each  Edwards,  to 
the  ignorant,  starving  men  whom  they  got  to  listen 
to  them.  "  The  world's  law  is  not  thy  friend ;  then 
be  not  poor,  but  break  it."  The  time  was  fast 
coming  when  thinking  men  in  England  would  recog- 
nise that  the  cure  for  crime  is  to  be  found  not  in  the 
suppression,  but  in  the  extension,  of  popular  educa- 
tion; and  that  the  best  strength  of  a  good  con- 
stitution is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  poorest  and 
humblest  citizen  has  some  share  in  the  making  of 
the  law.  The  more  we  consider  the  state  of  the 
laws  at  the  time  with  which  we  have  just  been  deal- 
ing, the  greater  will  be  our  surprise,  not  at  the 
amount  of  discontent  and  disorder  and  even  crime 
which  was  made  manifest  in  political  life,  but  rather 
at  the  general  forbearance  of  the  people,  the  integ- 
rity and  discretion  of  most  of  their  leaders,  and 
the  comparative  quietness  with  which  the  time 
of  trial  was  got  over,  which  connected  the  era  of 


THE  CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY  75 

order  and  reform  with  the  era  of   repression   and 
disorder. 

The  popular  agitation  at  last  took  the  shape  of  a 
definite  movement  in  favour  of  parliamentary  reform. 
The  subject  had  come  up  again  and  again,  in  a  fitful 
sort  of  way,  both  in  Parliament  and  outside  it,  and 
indeed  it  sometimes  happened  that  leaders  of  the 
movement  appeared  in  Parliament  at  a  time  when 
there  were  comparatively  few  followers  outside. 
Something,  however,  was  always  happening  to  turn 
men's  minds  away  from  the  subject.  There  were 
foreign  wars;  there  were  dynastic  troubles;  there 
were  the  deaths  of  sovereigns  from  whom  nothing 
in  the  direction  of  reform  could  be  hoped  ;  and  the 
coming  up  of  new  sovereigns  from  whom  something 
was  hoped  for  a  time,  until  the  hope  became  gradu- 
ally doomed  to  extinction. 

Parliament  was  supposed,  so  far  at  least  as  the 
House  of  Commons  was  concerned,  to  be  in  theory 
a  representative  assembly.  But,  even  in  theory,  it 
was  for  a  long  time  the  representative  of  the  sov- 
ereign and  not  of  the  people.  The  idea  appeared  to 
be  that  the  monarch  should  select  the  places  which 
he  considered  qualified  for  the  right  to  send  mem- 
bers to  the  House  of  Commons.  The  selections 
were  made  in  the  most  arbitrary  and  haphazard 
fashion ;  were  frequently  made  according  to  the  per- 
sonal favour  of  the  ruler;  and  sometimes,  even  when 
the  concession  seemed  given  fairly  enough  in  the 
first  instance,  the  changing  conditions  made  it  wholly 
inapplicable  and  unsuitable  for  a  future  generation. 
The  king,  for  example,  gave  the  right  of  representa- 


76  THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY 

tion  to  some  place  of  considerable  importance  at  the 
time.  Years  went  on,  and,  owing  to  local  circum- 
stances, the  population  dwindled  and  shrank,  and  at 
length  became  but  a  mere  handful  of  inhabitants. 
Yet  the  right  to  send  in  representatives  was  left  to 
these  places  all  the  same.  It  seemed  to  have  be- 
come a  sort  of  right  and  title  by  reason  of  habitude, 
and  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  no  one  was  greatly  in- 
terested in  challenging  the  authority  of  the  king  to 
let  the  representation  remain  wherever  any  of  his 
predecessors  had  conferred  it. 

The  anomalies  in  the  counties  were  not  so  great, 
because  a  county  population  often  remains  very 
much  the  same  from  one  generation  to  another. 
But  in  the  case  of  towns  and  villages  the  law  of 
change  was  incessantly  asserting  itself,  and  some- 
times in  the  most  fantastic  manner.  A  town  or 
large  village  had  received  the  right  of  sending  re- 
presentatives to  the  House  of  Commons.  At  the 
time  when  the  right  was  conferred  the  place  had  a 
considerable  population ;  and  if  we  concede,  as  no 
one  now  would  dream  of  conceding,  the  right  of 
the  sovereign  to  designate  suitable  places  for  repre- 
sentation, the  claim  of  this  particular  place  may 
seem  to  be  fairly  established.  But  for  some  reason 
or  other  the  trade  of  the  town  or  village  fell  off; 
the  inhabitants  looked  for  other  places  in  which 
there  seemed  a  better  chance  of  making  a  decent 
living;  and  the  region  became  almost  as  deserted 
as  Goldsmith's  village.  In  many  instances  the  con- 
stituency, if  we  may  call  it  so,  disappeared  so  com- 
pletely that  only  the  owner  of  the  soil  remained, 


THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY  77 

and  he  calmly  continued  to  send  in  his  representa- 
tive to  the  House  of  Commons.  Nobody  took  the 
trouble  to  oppose  him.  It  was  difficult  to  get  up 
any  impressive  agitation  about  that  one  particular 
anomaly,  and  no  definite  scheme  of  constitutional 
reform  had  yet  been  put  together  and  brought  be- 
fore the  public. 

One  famous  illustration  of  this  condition  of  things 
became  an  effective  argument  in  favour  of  reform 
at  a  day  a  little  later,  which  we  shall  have  to  deal 
with  more  fully  after  a  while,  when  a  definite  Re- 
form Bill  was  brought  forward  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  During  the  debates  on  that  question 
the  representative  of  a  place  called  Ludgershall, 
himself  a  sincere  reformer,  attracted  much  atten- 
tion by  the  brief  and  effective  manner  in  which  he 
dealt  with  the  question.  He  said:  "I  am  the 
owner  of  Ludgershall,  I  am  the  constituency  of 
Ludgershall,  I  am  the  representative  of  Ludgershall, 
and  in  each  capacity  I  demand  the  disfranchisement 
of  Ludgershall. ' ' 

One  of  the  most  famous  places  which  were  made 
conspicuous  at  that  time  was  the  borough  of  Old 
Sarum.  Every  reader  who  has  even  dipped  into 
the  history  of  those  times  must  have  met  over  and 
over  again  with  allusions  to  such  boroughs  as  Gat- 
ton  and  Old  Sarum.  Either  case  would  answer 
as  an  argument  for  the  present  purpose;  but  we 
take  the  case  of  Old  Sarum  as  being  perhaps,  on 
the  whole,  the  more  picturesque  of  the  two.  Old 
Sarum  was  a  town  in  Wiltshire ;  it  stood  on  Salis- 
bury Plain,  in  the  very  shadow  of  the  majestic 


78  THE   CATO  STREET  CONSPIRACY 

ruins  of  Stonehenge,  to  which  travellers  from  all 
ends  of  the  earth  make  pilgrimage  to-day.  Old 
Sarum  was  authorised  to  send  representatives  to 
Parliament  in  the  time  of  Edward  I.  The  right  of 
representation  was  renewed  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
III.,  and  from  that  time  it  remained  until  the  reform 
agitation  took  distinct  and  practical  shape  in  1830; 
but  in  the  meanwhile  the  town  of  Old  Sarum  itself 
had  gradually  disappeared.  A  New  Sarum  was 
arising  under  happier  auspices  a  few  miles  away, 
around  the  noble  walls  and  spire  of  Salisbury  Cathe- 
dral: for  the  New  Sarum  of  a  former  day  is  the 
thriving  city  of  Salisbury  to-day.  Old  Sarum,  how- 
ever, or  at  least  the  owner  of  the  soil,  manfully  stuck 
to  the  right  of  sending  representatives  to  the  House 
of  Commons.  Travellers  who  go  to  visit  Stonehenge 
at  the  present  day  are  often  taken  a  little  out  of 
their  direct  course  in  order  that  they  may  be  shown 
the  few  evidences  that  yet  remain  of  the  existence  of 
Old  Sarum,  the  few  faint  traces  that  are  left  to  prove 
that  once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  town  or  village 
on  the  spot  which  had  the  right  of  sending  men  to 
represent  it  in  Parliament.  For  years  and  for  gen- 
erations the  men  who  sat  in  Parliament  for  the 
borough  of  Old  Sarum  represented  nothing  but  the 
bare  soil  and  the  will  of  a  landed  proprietor. 

It  may  at  first  seem  incredible  that  such  a  state  of 
things  could  have  existed  in  England  in  the  memo- 
ries of  men  who  are  still  living;  but  the  actual 
fact  is  beyond  dispute.  In  the  meanwhile,  new  con- 
ditions of  things  were  arising  all  over  the  country : 
trade  and  manufactures  were  growing  here,  there, 


THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY  79 

and  everywhere ;  England  was  gradually  ceasing  to 
be  essentially  an  agricultural  country,  and  was  be- 
coming a  country  of  commerce  and  of  manufactured 
goods ;  great  towns  were  rising  up  in  different  parts 
of  the  island,  full  of  life  and  bustle  and  energy, 
where  workmen  were  employed  by  hundreds,  and 
capital  was  invested  to  an  immense  amount ;  where 
crowded  streets  and  busy  shops  told  their  story  of 
growing  and  spreading  prosperity.  Many  of  these 
towns  had  no  representation  whatever  in  Parliament, 
while  the  empty  spaces  of  Ludgershall  and  Old 
Sarum  had  men  to  speak  for  them  in  the  great 
national  chamber  of  debate.  The  fact  was,  that  the 
whole  parliamentary  system  had  come  to  a  deadlock ; 
it  was  no  longer  practicable  for  the  sovereign  to 
create  constituencies  wherever  he  thought  fit;  the 
time  had  passed  for  such  an  act  of  initiative  on 
the  part  of  the  monarch  ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  the 
time  had  not  yet  come  when  the  reform  movement 
had  become  strong  enough  to  set  to  work  at  undoing 
the  errors  of  the  past  and  introducing  a  rational  and 
symmetrical  system  of  parliamentary  representation. 
Thus  it  came  about  that  at  least  two-thirds  of  the 
numbers  of  men  who  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons 
were  the  mere  nominees  of  peers  or  great  landlords. 
These  owners  of  the  soil,  to  quote  the  words  of  a 
modern  writer,  "  owned  their  boroughs  and  their 
members,  just  as  they  owned  their  parks  and  their 
cattle."  '  Have  I  not  a  right  to  do  what  I  like 
with  my  own  ?  "  was  the  argument  of  a  powerful 
peer,  even  after  Old  Sarum  had  been  extinguished ; 
and  in  this  demand  he  was  asserting  his  right  to 


8O  THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY 

nominate  anyone  he  pleased  as  representative  of 
the  constituency  wherein  he  was  lord  of  the  soil. 
One  duke  had  the  right  of  returning  eleven  members 
to  Parliament;  another  had  to  be  content  with 
nominating  only  nine.  As  a  matter  of  course,  par- 
liamentary seats  were  openly  bought  and  sold. 
There  were  some  cases  in  which  the  right  of  repre- 
sentation was  offered  for  sale  by  public  advertise- 
ment. 

Thus,  therefore,  there  were  two  gross  anomalies 
brought  into  striking  contrast.  On  the  one  side  of 
the  field  there  were  a  number  of  absolutely  empty 
spaces  endowed  with  the  right  of  sending  mem- 
bers to  the  House  of  Commons;  and  on  the  other 
side  there  were  populous  and  thriving  towns  and 
cities  which  had  no  legal  claim  whatever  to  parlia- 
mentary representation.  It  was  obviously  impossi- 
ble that  such  a  state  of  things  could  long  continue 
in  a  country  like  England,  which  was  growing  more 
every  day  into  civilisation ;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  the  French  Revolution  had,  for  a  time,  a 
disheartening  effect,  even  upon  some  most  earnest 
advocates  of  a  rational  scheme  of  reform.  Be- 
sides these  outrageous  anomalies,  as  we  may  fairly 
call  them,  the  whole  electoral  system  was  full  of  the 
grossest  abuses.  When  a  contest  took  place  in  a 
borough,  that  is,  in  a  borough  which  had  any  popu- 
lation and  any  voters  to  contest,  the  polling  was 
allowed  at  one  time  to  go  on  for  six  weeks,  and  only 
towards  the  close  of  the  century  was  the  time-limit 
reduced  to  fifteen  days.  Bribery  of  the  grossest 
kind  was  allowed  to  go  on  without  anyone  thinking 


THE   CATO   STREET  CONSPIRACY  8 1 

of  interfering.  The  cost  of  a  severe  contest  was  so 
great  that  nobody  but  a  rich  man,  or  at  all  events  a 
man  with  rich  backers,  could  possibly  think  of 
undertaking  to  stand  for  a  constituency,  no  matter 
what  his  merits  or  his  cause. 

VOL.  I. — 6 


CHAPTER  VI 

GEORGE   CANNING 

AMONG  the  rising  names  of  statesmen  in  the 
early  part  of  the  century  the  greatest  name 
was  undoubtedly  that  of  George  Canning.  The 
men  who  have  hitherto  been  mentioned  in  these 
pages  were,  for  the  most  part,  men  who  had  won 
their  fame  before  the  century  began,  such  men  as 
Pitt  and  Fox  and  Burke.  But  the  career  of  Can- 
ning belongs  almost  altogether  to  the  story  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Canning  was  the  son  of  a  liter- 
ary man  who  was  supposed  to  have  gifts,  or  at  all 
events  promises,  as  a  writer;  but  the  highly  respect- 
able family  to  which  he  belonged  regarded  literature 
as  a  decidedly  ungentlemanly,  if  not  disreputable, 
sort  of  occupation ;  and  the  elder  Canning  was  there- 
fore edged  out  of  the  circle  with  a  very  stinted  in- 
come to  maintain  him,  and  had  to  supplement  the 
income  by  various  experiments  which  nearly  all 
proved  to  be  unsuccessful.  He  tried  to  be  an 
author,  and  did  not  succeed ;  he  was  called  to  the 
bar  and  endeavoured  to  get  on  as  an  advocate,  but 
without  success;  he  even  tried,  it  is  certain,  to  be  a 
wine  merchant,  but  the  public  did  not  show  any 

82 


RIGHT    HON.    GEORGE   CANNING,    M.P. 
From  a  bust  by  F.  Chantrey,  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


GEORGE   CANNING  83 

anxiety  to  consume  his  wines,  and  he  died  early,  a 
disappointed  and  broken-spirited  man.  His  widow, 
a  very  beautiful  woman,  was  encouraged  to  believe 
that  she  had  some  talent  for  acting,  and  she  accord- 
ingly, driven  by  the  necessity  of  having  to  make  a 
living  for  herself  and  her  son,  took  to  the  stage.  She 
played  in  London,  but  without  marked  success,  and 
after  a  while  had  to  be  content  with  theatrical  tours 
in  the  provinces,  until  at  last  she  married  an  actor, 
and  dropped  out  of  history.  Her  career  on  the  stage 
is  chiefly  to  be  remembered  because  of  the  obloquy 
it  brought  upon  her  illustrious  son,  George  Canning. 
While  Canning  was  slowly  rising  into  great  repu- 
tation as  an  orator  and  statesman,  and  even  when 
he  had  reached  the  very  zenith  of  his  fame,  his 
enemies  had  no  worse  accusation  to  make  against 
him  than  to  remind  the  world  that  he  was  the 
son  of  an  actress.  The  father  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
insisted  at  one  time  that  his  daughter  must  not 
marry  an  actor.  Like  Prospero's  daughter,  she 
broke  his  hest.  She  married  Mr.  Siddons,  who 
was  on  the  stage,  and  when  her  father  remonstrated 
with  her  she  smilingly  excused  herself  on  the  ground 
that  no  one  could  regard  Mr.  Siddons  as  an  actor. 
In  the  same  spirit  Canning  might,  if  he  had  thought 
it  fitting  to  notice  such  a  taunt  in  any  way,  have 
contended  that  his  mother  was  not  an  actress,  either 
by  profession  or  by  vocation.  Had  Mrs.  Canning 
been  really  a  great  actress,  her  son  would  no  doubt 
have  felt  proud  of  her  genius ;  but  much  of  the  sting 
in  the  taunt  levelled  against  him  was  contained  in 
the  statement,  constantly  made,  that  his  mother  was 


84  GEORGE   CANNING 

only  a  member  of  a  travelling  stock  company. 
Manners  have  so  much  altered  since  that  time  that 
it  seems  hard  now  to  understand  how  the  enemies 
of  a  great  public  man  could  stoop  to  make  it  a 
charge  against  him,  that  his  mother  had  tried  to 
earn  a  living  when  widowed  and  penniless  by  acting 
on  the  stage.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  and  proudly  placed  of  Can- 
ning's political  enemies  did  degrade  themselves  by 
constantly  talking  of  him  as  the  son  of  an  actress. 
It  is  certain,  too,  that  in  his  heart  he  bitterly  re- 
sented such  whispered  insults.  Canning,  as  it  has 
been  well  said,  was  a  man  far  too  sensitive  for  his 
own  happiness,  and  his  enemies  knew  of  his  sensi- 
tiveness and  practised  upon  it  accordingly. 

George  Canning  was  born  in  England,  and  his 
education  was  undertaken  by  his  father's  brother,  a 
rich  merchant,  who  no  doubt  was  anxious  to  repair 
in  some  measure  to  the  son  for  the  unkindness  shown 
to  the  father,  and  he  was  sent  to  Eton  and  to  Ox- 
ford. He  studied  for  the  bar;  but  his  political  gifts 
and  his  power  of  speech  soon  drew  on  him  the  at- 
tention of  all  who  came  in  his  way.  Sheridan,  who 
was  a  relative  of  Canning's  mother,  introduced  him 
to  Fox  and  Burke  and  Charles  Grey.  Canning  cul- 
tivated assiduously,  meanwhile,  the  art  of  public 
speaking,  and  he  obtained  a  seat  in  Parliament  in 
1793.  He  had  a  singularly  handsome  and  graceful 
person,  fine  features,  and  a  noble  forehead,  and  a 
voice  which  lent  itself  to  high  oratorical  effort.  It 
became  a  sort  of  fashion  of  speech  at  one  time  to 
compliment  rising  young  men  by  declaring  that 


GEORGE   CANNING  85 

their  appearance  was  like  that  of  Mr.  Canning. 
Most,  even  of  his  own  close  associates,  assumed  that 
when  Canning  went  into  Parliament  he  would  at 
once  take  the  position  of  a  Whig,  and  rank  himself 
with  the  opponents  of  the  Tories.  But  Canning 
was  at  this  time  and  for  long  after  strongly  under 
the  influence  of  Pitt,  to  whom,  indeed,  he  owed  in 
great  measure  his  first  chance  of  obtaining  a  seat  in 
the  House  of  Commons;  and  also  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Lord  Liverpool,  by  whom  it  is  said  that  he 
was  first  introduced  to  Pitt,  and  who  had  been  a 
close  friend  of  his  at  Oxford. 

Canning  made  himself  conspicuous  for  a  long 
time,  principally  as  a  dashing  and  daring  assailant  of 
the  Opposition.  He  even  stood  up  to  Fox  himself, 
with  a  courage  that  perhaps  only  youth  can  satis- 
factorily explain.  If  Canning  had  any  deliberate 
personal  purpose  in  the  course  he  took,  it  was  pos- 
sibly the  result  of  a  conviction  that  a  man  cannot 
begin  too  early  in  striving  to  make  an  impression  by 
any  means  on  the  House  of  Commons.  Without 
genuine  ability  to  back  it,  this  sort  of  policy  is  sure 
to  be  a  failure ;  but  it  may  turn  out  to  be  a  success 
if  it  is  employed  as  a  means  of  challenging  attention 
to  a  capacity  for  public  utterance  which  might  other- 
wise remain  unnoticed  until  some  great  opportunity 
came.  The  sensitiveness  of  Canning's  nature  might 
make  it  seem  unlikely  that  such  a  man  could  adopt 
such  a  policy  for  the  mere  sake  of  making  himself 
conspicuous  in  Parliament,  and  yet  we  all  know  that 
very  sensitive  natures  do  often  exist  with  a  daring 
ambition  and  an  undismayed  courage. 


86  GEORGE  CANNING 

Canning  was  probably  pursuing  in  the  House  of 
Commons  the  training  to  which  he  had  subjected 
himself  for  long  before  in  the  political  clubs  and 
debating  societies.  In  any  case,  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  quite  made  up  his  mind  in  his  early  days  as 
to  the  precise  political  opinions  with  which  he  was 
to  identify  his  career.  He  supported  Pitt,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  great  debates  on  the  question  of  the 
Parliamentary  Union  with  Ireland ;  but  it  was  ob- 
served at  the  time  that  he  carefully  avoided  com- 
mitting himself  to  any  views  with  regard  to  the 
Catholic  claims,  although  the  refusal  of  the  Catholic 
claims  was  the  cause  of  the  Rebellion  of  1798,  and 
that  rebellion  was  made  the  excuse  for  the  Act  of 
Union,  which  was  carried  in  great  measure  by  Pitt's 
implied  promises  that  when  the  Union  was  carried 
something  would  be  done  to  satisfy  the  Catholic 
demand.  In  fact,  for  a  long  time,  Canning  acted 
as  the  regular  champion  of  Pitt  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  outside  its  doors  as  well. 

He  started,  in  conjunction  with  one  or  two  political 
friends,  the  famous  Anti-  Jacobin  newspaper,  a  paper 
intended  to  hold  up  to  ridicule  all  the  doctrines  of 
the  French  Revolution  and  of  its  admirers  in  this 
country.  Canning  was  a  master  of  brilliant  political 
sarcasm,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Anti- 
Jacobin  became  quite  a  power  in  its  day.  The 
basis  of  the  satire  was  easy  enough.  It  simply  as- 
sumed that  every  public  man  who  hoped  for  peace 
with  France,  and  who  talked  even  in  the  mildest 
way  of  putting  any  possible  faith  in  the  leaders  of 
the  French  people,  must  be  a  thorough-going  sym- 


GEORGE   GROTE. 
From  a  painting  by  Thomas  Stewardson,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


GEORGE   CANNING  87 

pathiser  with  the  sentiments  of  the  Jacobin  Club  in 
Paris,  the  club  to  which  Danton  and  Robespierre 
belonged ;  must  be  the  uncompromising  enemy  of 
the  Throne,  the  Altar,  and  the  aristocracy ;  must  be 
a  devotee  of  the  supposed  rights  of  man ;  must  con- 
sider the  horny-handed  mechanic  as  the  natural  lord 
of  creation;  must  regard  education  as  the  enemy  of 
enlightenment,  and  religion  as  the  opponent  of 
virtue.  Such  were  the  genial  assumptions  on  which 
the  A nti-Jacobin  was  conducted.  It  must  be  owned 
that  its  satirical  touches  make  bright  reading,  even 
still,  and  the  time  has  yet  to  come,  and  is  probably 
far  distant,  when  the  House  of  Commons  is  no  longer 
to  be  regaled  by  citations  from  the  "  Ballad  of  the 
Needy  Knife-Grinder."  Among  those  who  co- 
operated with  Canning  in  the  production  of  the 
Anti-Jacobin  was  Hookham  Frere,  Canning's  old 
associate,  who  was  afterwards  his  parliamentary 
colleague  and  worked  with  him  and  under  him  in 
more  than  one  Ministry. 

'"  Canning  had  almost  avowedly  entered  Parliament 
with  the  view  of  becoming  a  Minister  of  the  Crown, 
and  his  chance  was  not  long  postponed ;  for  in  the 
spring  of  1796  he  became  Under-Secretary  of  State 
for  Foreign  Affairs.  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  one  of  his 
novels,  has  laid  it  down  as  a  law  that  an  Under- 
secretary for  Foreign  Affairs  whose  chief  is  in  the 
House  of  Lords  is  "  master  of  the  situation."  This 
was  Canning's  position,  and  he  was  undoubtedly  well 
qualified  to  be  master  of  the  situation.  In  1807  he 
became  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs.  The  splen- 
dour of  his  career  displayed  itself  almost  altogether 


88  GEORGE   CANNING 

in  his  foreign  policy.  The  higher  his  position,  the 
greater  his  influence,  the  more  conspicuous  became 
his  capacity  for  developing  a  foreign  policy  best 
calculated  to  maintain  the  peace  and  the  honour  of 
his  own  country,  and  to  discourage  war  and  the 
policy  that  leads  to  war.  In  1822  he  was  appointed 
Viceroy  of  India,  and  was  actually  on  the  eve  of 
departure  when  the  suicide  of  Lord  Londonderry 
called  him  back  to  the  Foreign  Office. 

The  artificial  arrangements  made  by  the  Congress 
of  Vienna  and  by  the  Holy  Alliance  were  already 
beginning  to  break  up.  This  was  only  what  any 
intelligent  man,  not  to  say  any  statesman,  might 
have  confidently  anticipated ;  but  it  does  not  appear 
to  have  been  anticipated  in  the  least  by  any  of  the 
continental  statesmen  who  were  in  office,  and  was 
expected,  indeed,  by  very  few  statesmen  in  Eng- 
land. The  continental  sovereigns  went  on  as  if 
their  powers  were  destined  to  endure  for  ever.  The 
faintest  grumblings  on  the  part  of  any  of  their  sub- 
jects only  provoked  new  measures  of  repression.  The 
immediate  result  was  that  Spain  was  in  a  state  of 
revolution ;  that  along  the  banks  of  the  great  Ger- 
man rivers  the  young  men  were  forming  themselves 
into  associations  for  the  spread  of  liberty ;  that  even 
in  Vienna  itself  the  Emperor  of  Austria  found  it 
hard  to  keep  down  revolt ;  and  that  in  Poland  the 
Emperor  of  Russia's  brother,  the  Grand  Duke  Con- 
stantine,  whose  memory  is  still  execrated  by  all 
patriotic  Poles,  was  employing  measures  of  the  most 
atrocious  severity  to  crush  the  spirit  of  the  kingdom ; 
while  already  keen  observers  could  see  that  a  struggle 


GEORGE  CANNING  89 

was  in  preparation  for  the  rescue  of  Italy  from  the 
bondage  in  which  she  had  been  cast  by  the  Allied 
Sovereigns. 

There  was  in  Germany  at  that  time  a  popular 
dramatist  named  Kotzebue,  some  of  whose  plays 
were  once  very  popular  in  England,  and  in  adapted 
form  and  in  English  translation  held  their  place  on 
our  stage  for  a  long  time,  although  one  of  them  was 
satirised  by  James  and  Horace  Smith  in  The  Re- 
jected Addresses,  and  by  Thackeray  in  Pendennis. 
Kotzebue  had  held  several  offices  under  Russia,  and 
was  suspected,  and  indeed  was  known,  to  be  in  the 
habit  of  sending  frequent  letters  to  the  Emperor  of 
Russia;  and  it  was  understood  that  the  object  of  the 
letters  was  to  direct  the  Emperor's  attention  to  the 
movement  going  on  among  the  students  all  over 
Prussia  in  favour  of  national  liberty  and  independ- 
ence. A  young  fanatic  of  the  time,  a  Jena  student, 
named  Sand,  driven  to  frenzy  by  what  he  had  heard 
of  Kotzebue's  doings,  gave  with  his  own  hand  the 
unhappy  poet  a  death  more  tragic  than  any  de- 
scribed in  the  poet's  own  gloomiest  drama.  Sand 
was  tried,  found  guilty,  and  sent  to  execution  at 
once,  and  his  death  was  made  the  occasion  for  a 
great  popular  demonstration  in  honour  of  his  mem- 
ory. Of  course,  no  one  could  attempt  to  justify  the 
murder  committed  by  Sand ;  but  such  deeds  often 
come  as  the  warning  to  tell  despotic  rulers  that 
people  are  growing  impatient  of  their  rule.  No 
warning,  however,  was  taken  by  the  sovereigns  of 
the  Continent,  whose  only  idea,  boyond  immediate 
measures  of  repression,  was  to  get  together  another 


90  GEORGE   CANNING 

European  Congress,  in  order  to  obtain  sanction  and 
support  for  their  despotic  sway.  "  Quick!  a  con- 
gress," wrote  the  French  poet  B6ranger,  "  two — 
three — congresses — four,  five,  six  congresses,"  and 
so  he  went  on  in  some  spirited  verses  to  ridicule  the 
folly  of  those  who  believed  that  a  whole  continent 
of  peoples  could  be  kept  in  order  by  the  dictates  of  a 
meeting  of  crowned  conspirators.  It  was  therefore 
arranged  that  a  Congress  should  be  held  at  Verona, 
and  England  was  invited  to  take  part  in  the  assembly 
and  to  send  her  representative  to  assist  in  guiding 
its  councils. 

Castlereagh,  Lord  Londonderry,  would  naturally 
have  been  the  man  chosen  by  England  for  such  a 
purpose ;  but  Londonderry  was  gone,  and  it  was  re- 
solved to  send  no  less  a  person  than  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  in  his  place.  The  Duke  was  naturally 
the  man  most  welcome  to  the  continental  sover- 
eigns whom  England  could  possibly  send  to  take 
part  in  such  a  meeting.  But  for  his  military  genius 
a  Bourbon  king  would  not  have  been  on  the  throne 
of  France,  and  the  arrangements  of  the  Congress  of 
Vienna  could  never  have  been  undertaken.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  had  no  particular  foreign  policy 
of  his  own,  although  it  must  be  remembered  that  he 
had  wisely  refrained  from  pledging  his  Government 
to  the  principles  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  The  conti- 
nental sovereigns,  however,  believed  that  in  the  mere 
nomination  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  they  had 
the  best  guarantee  of  England's  sympathy,  approval, 
and  support. 

The  object  for  which  the  Congress  was  ostenta- 


GEORGE   CANNING  gi 

tiously  summoned  was  not,  however,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, to  deal  with  anything  but  the  condition  of 
Greece,  and  to  prevent,  if  possible,  a  war  between 
Russia  and  Turkey.  The  Duke  of  Wellington, 
meanwhile,  was  informed  by  a  French  statesman 
that  the  condition  of  Spain  would  also  be  brought 
under  the  notice  of  the  Congress;  and  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  who  had  just  arrived  in  Paris,  wrote 
home  to  Canning  for  instructions  as  to  the  course  he 
was  to  pursue.  Canning  had  been  only  a  few  days 
in  office;  but  he  soon  made  up  his  mind.  He  had 
never  had  much  doubt  that  the  Congress  would  seek 
to  deal  with  subjects  which  came  nearer  to  the 
hearts  of  most  of  the  sovereigns  than  the  condition 
of  struggling  Greece. 

Canning  sent  a  reply  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
the  important  part  of  which  deserves  quotation  as  a 
document  of  the  greatest  moment,  a  proclamation 
of  the  new  era  which  Canning  was  introducing  into 
the  foreign  policy  of  England.  "  If,"  wrote  Can- 
ning, "  there  be  a  determined  project  to  interfere  by 
force  or  by  menace  in  the  present  struggle  in  Spain, 
so  convinced  are  his  Majesty's  Government  of  the 
uselessness  and  danger  of  any  such  interference,  so 
objectionable  does  it  appear  to  them  in  principle, 
as  well  as  impracticable  in  execution,  that  when  the 
necessity  arises,  or,  I  would  rather  say,  when  the 
opportunity  offers,  I  am  to  instruct  your  Grace  at 
once  frankly  and  peremptorily  to  declare  that  to  any 
such  interference,  come  what  may,  his  Majesty  will 
not  be  a  party."  The  result  of  these  instructions 
was  decisive.  'France,  through  her  representative, 


92  GEORGE   CANNING 

strongly  argued  for  an  interference  with  the  Spanish 
Revolution  by  force  of  arms,  and  insisted  that  the 
condition  of  France  herself  was  unsafe  while  only 
the  Pyrenees  divided  her  from  the  forward  move- 
ment in  Spain.  But  France  might  plead  as  she 
would.  The  instructions  given  by  Canning  to  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  made  England's  purpose  too 
plain  to  be  mistaken  ;  and  the  baffled  Sovereigns  did 
not  venture  to  pass  any  resolution  in  favour  of  any 
interference  in  Spanish  affairs.  Canning  never  had 
the  slightest  belief  in  the  policy  of  governing  Europe 
by  means  of  congresses. 

There  were,  then,  two  great  principles  in  direct  op- 
position— the  principle  of  those  who  believed  that  a 
set  of  European  kings  had  only  to  get  together,  and 
agree,  in  order  to  make  their  decrees  a  command  to 
the  civilised  world ;  and  the  principle  of  those  who 
believed,  with  Canning,  that  the  affairs  of  each 
country  can  only  in  the  end  be  settled  by  its  inhab- 
itants. Here,  then,  was  the  actual  parting  of  the 
ways.  Canning  had  laid  down  a  policy  which  was 
absolutely  new  at  the  time,  but  which  became,  with 
some  slight  and  fitful  deviations,  the  settled  foreign 
policy  of  England.  Canning  himself  would  un- 
doubtedly have  preferred,  on  the  whole,  to  send  no 
English  representative  to  the  Congress  of  Verona; 
but  he  thought  so  sharp  a  decision  might  be  unwise 
at  such  a  moment ;  and  he  believed  that  he  could 
better  attain  his  own  ends  by  the  course  which  he 
actually  adopted.  His  own  great  objects  were  two 
in  number.  The  first  was  to  keep  his  own  country, 
and  if  possible  all  other  countries,  at  peace ;  and  his 


GEORGE   CANNING  93 

minor  and  more  immediate  object  was  the  practical 
dissolution  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  George  Canning  was  the  first  Minister  for 
England's  foreign  affairs  who  ever  set  up  that  policy 
of  peace.  His  apprehensions  as  to  the  purpose  of 
the  Congress  of  Verona  were  only  too  soon  justified. 
It  was  made  known  that  the  French  army  was  to  be 
sent  into  Spain  to  assist  the  Spanish  Bourbon  King 
in  abolishing  the  Constitution  and  crushing  all 
Spaniards  who  opposed  his  measures.  The  Duke 
of  Wellington  followed  the  instructions  of  his  chief, 
as,  to  render  him  only  justice,  he  always  did :  he 
offered  his  strong  remonstrance ;  he  made  known  the 
determination  of  England  as  set  forth  by  Canning; 
and  he  withdrew  from  the  Congress.  Canning  clearly 
saw  what  the  course  of  action  threatened  with  regard 
to  Spain  meant  as  regarded  other  countries.  It  was 
a  menace  to  Portugal,  which  might  be  expected  to 
join  with  Spain  in  repelling  the  French  invasion; 
and  it  was  a  menace  also  to  Spain's  South  American 
Colonies. 

On  the  I4th  of  April,  1823,  Canning  proclaimed 
his  policy  to  the  House  of  Commons.  He  insisted 
that  if  Portugal  at  her  own  choice  and  at  her  own 
risk  assisted  Spain  in  repelling  the  French,  there 
was  no  occasion  for  England's  intervention;  but  he 
declared  that  if  Portugal  should  remain  quiescent, 
and  should  nevertheless  be  attacked  by  France,  that 
attack  would  bring  Great  Britain  into  the  field  with 
all  her  force  to  support  the  independence  of  her 
ancient  and  faithful  ally.  So  far  as  the  South 
American  Colonies  were  concerned,  Canning  made 


94  GEORGE    CANNING 

known  the  policy  of  England  in  the  frankest  and 
most  explicit  language.  "  It  was  clear,"  he  said, 
"  that  Spain,  though  claiming  them  as  hers  by  right, 
had,  in  fact,  lost  all  power  and  influence  over  them. 
If  the  expected  war  were  to  break  out,  and  France 
should,  as  one  of  the  events  of  that  war,  invade  and 
take  possession  of  any  of  them,  so  that  it  might  be- 
come a  question  whether  the  colonies  should  be 
ceded,  and  to  whom ;  then  it  was  of  importance  for 
the  world  to  know  that  the  British  Government 
considered  the  separation  of  the  South  American 
Colonies  from  Spain  to  have  been  effected  so  com- 
pletely that  England  would  not  admit  for  an  instant 
any  claim  on  the  part  of  Spain  to  hand  over  to 
another  Power  any  of  those  colonies  which  had 
ceased  to  be  under  her  direct  and  positive  influ- 
ence." In  other  words,  the  British  Government 
regarded  the  South  American  Colonies  as  no  longer 
belonging  to  Spain  ;  but  England  did  not  feel 
charged  with  securing  their  independence.  If,  how- 
ever, Spain  were  to  proceed  to  the  cession  of  any  of 
those  colonies  to  some  foreign  Power,  England  would 
feel  bound  to  interfere ;  and  to  such  a  declaration 
Canning  added,  "  the  British  Government  had  at 
last  been  forced."  Canning  carried  his  policy  by 
a  triumphant  majority — an  overwhelming  majority 
— in  the  House  of  Commons. 

One  passage  of  a  famous  speech  delivered  by 
Canning  in  Plymouth  has  already  become  classic  in 
our  language.  It  has  been  quoted  again  and  again, 
but  it  will  bear  quotation  once  more,  if  only  to  show 
the  peculiar  power  and  grace  of  Canning's  eloquence. 


GEORGE   CANNING  95 

Canning  had  been  declaring  that  the  ultimate  object 
of  his  Government  and  of  himself  was  to  maintain 
the  peace  of  the  world  ;  but  he  utterly  repudiated  the 
idea  that "  we  cultivate  peace  either  because  we 
fear  or  because  we  are  unprepared  for  war.  The  re- 
sources created  by  peace  are  the  means  of  war.  In 
cherishing  these  resources  we  but  accumulate  those 
means.  Our  present  repose  is  no  more  a  proof  of 
inability  to  act  than  the  state  of  inertness  and  in- 
activity in  which  I  have  seen  those  mighty  masses 
that  float  in  the  waters  above  your  town  is  a  proof 
that  they  are  devoid  of  strength  and  incapable  of 
being  fitted  for  action.  You  well  know  how  soon 
one  of  these  stupendous  masses  now  reposing  on 
their  shadows  in  perfect  stillness,  how  soon  upon 
any  call  of  patriotism  or  of  necessity,  it  would  as- 
sume the  likeness  of  an  animated  thing,  instinct 
with  life  and  motion,  how  soon  it  would  ruffle,  as  it 
were,  its  swelling  plumage,  how  quickly  it  would 
put  forth  all  its  beauty  and  its  bravery,  collect  its 
scattered  elements  of  strength,  and  awaken  its  dor- 
mant thunder.  Such  as  is  one  of  those  magnificent 
machines  when  springing  from  inaction  into  a  dis- 
play of  its  might — such  is  England  herself,  while 
apparently  passive  and  motionless  she  silently  con- 
centrates the  power  to  be  put  forth  on  an  adequate 
occasion." 

The  French  invaded  Spain,  and  soon  entered 
Madrid.  The  Spanish  Liberal  party  had  few  re- 
sources; and  had,  as  was  natural,  many  differences 
of  opinion  among  themselves  as  to  the  extent  to 
which  resistance  might  be  carried,  and  the  direction 


g6  GEORGE   CANNING 

which  resistance  might  most  effectually  take.  Some 
of  the  Spanish  leaders  were  summarily  hanged ;  the 
Spanish  King,  by  proclamation,  abolished  the  Con- 
stitution, and  reduced,  so  far  as  a  royal  declaration 
could  do  it,  the  whole  nation  into  a  system  of  serf- 
dom to  a  despotic  Government.  Then  the  French 
Government,  flushed  with  such  a  success,  actually 
made  it  known  that  the  next  step  was  to  be  the  con- 
quest, on  behalf  of  Spain,  of  the  insurgent  colonies 
in  South  America. 

Then  came  the  moment  for  Canning  to  back  up 
his  former  declaration ;  and  he  did  so  with  an  em- 
phasis that  could  not  be  mistaken.  "  It  could  not," 
he  declared,  "  be  now  permitted  that  France  should 
carry  the  war  across  the  Atlantic,  and  should  recon- 
quer for  Spain  and  hand  back  to  Spain  those  colonies 
over  which  Spain  had  no  longer  any  power  of  her 
own."  \We  will  not,"  said  Canning,  "  interfere 
with  Spain  in  any  attempt  which  she  may  make  to 
reconquer  for  herself  what  were  once  her  colonies ; 
but  vi*e  will  not  permit  any  third  Power  to  attack  or 
reconquer  them  for  her."  The  announcement  of 
this  declaration  sent  a  chill  to  the  hearts  of  all  the 
Ministers  of  the  French  and  Spanish  Bourbons.  To 
that  policy  Canning  adhered,  as  everyone  might 
have  known  that  he  would;  and  the  first  step  to 
make  it  a  reality  was  taken  when  it  was  announced 
to  Spain  that  British  Consuls  would  be  sent  to  the 
South  American  Colonies  to  protect  the  interests  of 
British  trade  and  traders  there.  The  Consuls  were 
appointed  and  despatched,  and  this  was,  in  point 
of  fact,  the  recognition  by  Great  Britain  of  the 


GEORGE   CANNING  97 

independence  of  the  South  American  Colonies. 
Defending  his  policy  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
Canning  made  use  of  some  words  which  are  never 
likely  to  be  forgotten  on  this  or  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  Contemplating  Spain,  he  said,  "  such  as 
our  ancestors  had  known  her,  I  resolved  that  if 
France  had  Spain  it  should  not  be  Spain  with  the 
Indies.  I  called  the  New  World  into  existence  to 
redress  the  balance  of  the  Old." 

This  was  exactly  what  Canning  had  done.  The 
famous  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  has  sometimes  been 
criticised  very  flippantly  and  very  ignorantly  in  this 
country,  was,  in  fact,  the  inspiration  of  George  Can- 
ning. When  Canning  said  that  he  had  called  the 
New  World  into  existence  to  redress  the  balance  of 
the  Old,  he  was  speaking  not  merely  of  the  South 
American  Colonies;  he  had  also  in  his  mind  the 
great  Republic  of  the  United  States.  Canning  had 
represented  to  President  Monroe  that  it  would  be  of 
immense  advantage  to  the  purposes  of  England  and 
to  the  peace  of  the  world  if  the  United  States  were 
to  announce  a  policy  which  repudiated  the  right  of 
any  European  state  to  set  up  a  monarchical  gov- 
ernment in  any  part  of  America  without  the  consent 
of  the  inhabitants  who  were  to  be  subjected  to  that 
government.  President  Monroe  welcomed  the  idea, 
and  proclaimed  the  doctrine  that  America  could  not 
look  on  with  indifference  when  a  foreign  sovereign 
endeavoured  to  set  up  a  kingdom  of  his  own  on 
American  soil  without  the  consent  of  the  popula- 
tion. So  curiously  misunderstood  has  been  this 
Monroe  Doctrine  that  writers  have  often  asked  in 


98  GEORGE   CANNING 

this  country  why  the  United  States  do  not  attempt 
to  apply  the  principle  to  British  Canada,  and  why 
they  did  not  apply  it  to  the  Empire  of  Brazil.  One 
might  have  thought  the  explanation  obvious.  When 
the  United  States  had  accomplished  their  independ- 
ence, they  found  the  population  of  Canada  forming 
a  willing  and  loyal  colony,  as  they  long  had  been, 
under  the  British  Crown.  When  the  Brazilian 
Colonies  were  changed  into  an  empire,  the  United 
States  saw  that  the  change  was  made  with  the  per- 
fect consent  of  the  Brazilian  population.  These 
cases  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 
The  United  States  had  never  had  the  least  idea  of 
asserting  any  right  to  prevent  independent  countries 
in  South  America,  or  colonies  in  North,  from  setting 
up  or  continuing  any  form  of  government  which 
suited  their  feelings  and  their  interests.  When, 
much  later  on,  Louis  Napoleon,  then  Emperor  of 
the  French,  went  about  to  set  up  a  sort  of  vassal 
empire  in  Mexico  with  a  vassal  sovereign  of  his 
own  nomination,  the  United  States,  then  in  the 
midst  of  their  tremendous  Civil  War,  warned  him 
again  and  again  that  such  a  policy  could  not  be 
tolerated ;  and  when  the  Civil  War  was  over  made 
it  known  to  him  distinctly  that  he  must  withdraw 
the  French  troops  from  Mexico  or  take  the  conse- 
quences. He  had  no  choice ;  he  withdrew  his  troops 
from  Mexico;  the  Mexican  Empire  instantly  van- 
ished ;  and  the  unhappy  Maximilian,  the  weak, 
well-meaning  instrument  of  Napoleon's  ambitious 
scheme,  lost  his  life  in  consequence.  But  no  one 
can  suppose  that  the  Government  of  the  United 


GEORGE   CANNING  99 

States  would  have  employed  forcible  intervention  if 
it  had  merely  occurred  to  the  minds  of  the  Mexican 
people  to  convert  their  President  into  a  so-called 
Emperor.  Canning  had  fulfilled  his  words ;  he  had 
called  in  the  New  World  to  redress  the  balance  of 
the  Old. 

A  veteran  member  of  the  House  of  Lords,  who 
was  in  Canning's  time  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  present  when 
Canning  made  his  famous  declaration.  Many  years 
ago  he  told  a  friend  of  the  present  writer  that  even 
while  the  memorable  words  were  passing  through 
Canning's  lips  there  was  a  doubt  among  a  consider- 
able portion  of  the  members  whether  the  words  were 
to  be  a  climax  or  an  anti-climax.  There  was  a  dis- 
position, at  first,  to  think  that  Canning  was  likely  to 
spoil,  by  what  seemed  to  be  a  rhetorical  conceit,  the 
effect  of  his  previous  magnificent  sentences.  Some 
were  already  almost  inclined  to  smile ;  but  the  elo- 
quence and  the  earnestness  of  the  orator  swept  all 
before  them  ;  and  the  concluding  words  of  the  pass- 
age became  a  climax  as  thrilling  as  the  House  of 
Commons  had  ever  known,  and  their  effect  was 
recorded  by  a  burst  of  applause  again  and  again 
repeated.  More  than  once  it  has  happened  with  a 
great  parliamentary  orator  that  there  is  a  moment 
of  doubt  whether  one  of  his  splendid  passages  is  to 
be  a  success  or  a  failure,  whether  he  is  to  lift  the 
House  to  his  own  level,  or  to  find  it  fall  away  from 
him  and  beneath  him  and  so  miss  his  best  effect. 
Something  of  the  kind  is  told  of  a  magnificent  pass- 
age in  one  of  John  Bright's  speeches  against  the 


IOO  GEORGE   CANNING 

policy  of  the  Crimean  War.  There  was  a  moment 
when  some  of  his  audience  feared  that  his  idea  and 
the  words  that  clothed  it  would  pass  over  the  heads 
of  the  members  and  so  be  misprized ;  and  an  intense 
feeling  of  relief  came  when  it  soon  was  found  that 
the  arrow  had  gone  straight  to  its  mark  in  the  intel- 
lects and  the  hearts  of  the  listeners. 

France  had  nothing  more  to  say  to  the  reconquest 
of  the  South  American  Colonies.  Canning  had  pro- 
claimed a  new  foreign  policy  for  England.  The 
Holy  Alliance  was  an  empty  name  thenceforth ;  and 
all  that  remained  for  the  Congress  of  Vienna  was 
that  the  world  should  see  its  work  breaking  up  and 
disappearing  fragment  after  fragment.  Canning's 
policy,  in  fact,  closed  the  era  of  congresses  like 
those  of  Vienna  and  Verona.  No  doubt  we  have 
had  congresses  since  that  time,  like  the  Congress  of 
Paris  and  like  the  Congress  of  Berlin;  but  these 
have  been  councils  summoned  together  after  a  great 
war  to  make  some  arrangement  as  to  the  results  of 
the  war.  They  have  sadly  bungled  their  business 
sometimes,  and  have  gone  beyond  the  reasonable 
sphere  of  their  duties,  but  they  have  not  attempted 
to  reconstruct  the  map  of  Europe,  or  to  decide  in 
arbitrary  fashion  for  the  population  of  any  country 
what  sort  of  government  it  is  to  accept  at  their  hands. 
The  policy  of  Canning  gave  a  new  direction  and  set  up 
new  limits  for  the  whole  foreign  policy  of  England. 

We  are  far  from  saying  that  England  has  never 
since  that  time  deviated  from  the  course  of  policy 
marked  out  by  Canning.  It  would  be  hard,  for  in- 
stance, to  contend  that  the  policy  which  brought 


GEORGE   CANNING  IOI 

England  into  the  Crimean  War  was  in  accordance 
with  Canning's  great  principle.  But,  after  all,  the 
course  of  action  in  politics  can  never  be  as  definite, 
never  can  carry  with  it  so  obvious  and  so  inevitable 
a  meaning,  as  an  axiom  in  arithmetic  or  mathe- 
matics. Where  political  life  is  concerned  there  is 
always,  or  almost  always,  an  opportunity  for  differ- 
ent observers  to  judge  from  a  different  point  of  view, 
and  then  we  have  to  make  allowance  for  the  gusts 
of  national  passion  which  sometimes  drive  the  State 
vessel  from  her  moorings  and  force  her  at  a  sudden 
and  untimely  moment  to  brave  the  ocean  and  the 
rocks.  But  the  policy  of  Canning  is  undoubtedly 
that  which  on  the  whole  has  governed  English 
statesmanship  from  that  time;  and  to  which  that 
statesmanship,  though  it  may  drift  away  now  and 
then,  is  always  certain  to  return. 

Canning  did  not  set  up  any  doctrine  of  absolute 
non-intervention,  such  as  a  few  great  Englishmen 
at  a  later  period  would  have  desired  that  their 
country  should  adopt.  Canning  would  not  have 
limited  the  policy  of  England,  even  if  such  limita- 
tion were  possible  at  his  day,  to  a  concern  simply 
with  her  own  domestic  affairs.  He  was  a  lover  of 
peace ;  and  his  policy  was  always  directed  towards 
the  maintenance  of  peace;  but  he  never  was  in 
favour  of  the  principle  which,  at  a  later  day,  was 
often  contemptuously  and  often  unjustly  described 
as  "  peace  at  any  price."  There  was  a  great  deal 
to  be  said  for  the  preaching  of  that  doctrine,  even 
when  preached  to  its  fullest  extent ;  but  it  was  never 
pushed  in  this  country  by  such  men  as  Cobden  and 


102  GEORGE   CANNING 

Bright,  for  example,  to  the  extent  of  an  argument 
that  England  must  submit  to  anything  rather  than 
draw  a  sword  or  fire  a  cannon. 

What  men  like  Cobden  and  Bright  contended  for 
was  that  the  policy  of  England  ought  to  concern 
itself,  as  a  rule,  with  the  welfare  of  our  own  popula- 
tions, in  the  first  instance ;  and  that  when  we  inter- 
vened in  the  affairs  of  foreign  countries  we  were 
almost  certain  to  do  so  with  an  imperfect  knowledge 
of  conditions  beyond  our  actual  experience,  and  we 
were  likely  to  bring  more  harm  than  good,  in  the 
end,  even  to  those  whose  cause  we  had  endeavoured 
to  benefit.  Canning  went  quite  as  far  as  Cobden 
or  Bright  could  have  done,  in  condemning  wars  for 
mere  annexation  of  territory  or  for  imposing  on  a 
foreign  state  the  political  systems  which  we  had 
found  to  work  successfully  at  home.  But  Canning 
distinctly  admitted  the  principle  that  occasions 
might  arise  when  it  would  be  necessary  for  England 
to  intervene,  although  in  a  quarrel  which  in  nowise 
concerned  the  interests  of  her  own  people,  in  order 
to  defend  a  weak  ally  against  wanton  and  cruel 
aggression,  or  to  prevent  a  movement  which  we  our- 
selves had  fostered  for  national  freedom  in  some 
foreign  state  from  being  crushed  by  the  wanton 
intervention  of  some  Power  as  foreign  to  the  move- 
ment as  we  ourselves,  and  intervening  on  the  wrong 
side.  This,  except  for  one  or  two  occasional  and 
lamentable  infractions  of  the  principle,  has  been  the 
policy  of  England  since  Canning's  time,  a  policy  of 
general,  but  not  absolute,  non-intervention  in  the 
struggles  of  the  European  Continent. 


GEORGE   CANNING  103 

A  man  in  private  life  adopts  a  certain  resolution 
as  a  guidance  for  his  conduct:  he  is  perhaps  led 
away  by  sudden  emergency  or  sudden  alarm  to  de- 
viate from  it;  but  when  the  moment  of  alarm  or 
confusion  is  over,  he  returns  to  it,  and  makes  it  his 
rule  of  life  again,  and  faithfully  adheres  to  it.  Of 
such  a  man  it  would  be  only  fair  and  just  to  say  that 
he  made  that  principle  the  general  guidance  of  his 
life.  It  is  so  with  the  foreign  policy  of  England 
since  Canning's  time.  The  country  has,  on  the 
whole,  adhered  to  Canning's  policy ;  nor  is  it  possible 
for  us  to  think  of  any  serious  reaction  against  that 
policy  being  encouraged  or  allowed  by  English 
statesmanship.  We  may  take  it  for  granted  that 
every  succeeding  generation  will  strengthen  the 
hold  of  Canning's  policy  over  the  intellects  and 
the  hearts  of  public  men  in  these  countries  and  of 
the  populations  without  whose  support  public  men 
must  cease  to  have  control  or  influence.  Therefore 
it  is  only  uttering  the  merest  commonplace  to  say 
that  the  career  of  Canning  as  Foreign  Minister  made 
a  new  epoch  in  England's  foreign  policy. 

Many  critics  at  the  time  and  many  readers  of  a 
later  generation  have  sometimes  found  fault  with 
Canning's  speeches,  on  the  ground  that  they  were 
not  inspired  by  any  passionate  enthusiasm  for  the 
cause  of  popular  freedom.  Even  when  he  con- 
demned the  Holy  Alliance  and  dictated  the  policy 
under  which  the  Holy  Alliance  soon  withered  and 
died,  he  did  not  flame  into  oratorical  passion  over 
the  cause  of  popular  freedom.  But  it  has  to  be  re- 
membered that  with  all  his  exalted  eloquence  Can- 


IO4  GEORGE   CANNING 

ning  was  essentially  a  practical  man  and  thoroughly 
understood  what  he  could  do  and  what  he  could  not 
do.  He  took  into  full  account  all  the  difficulties 
that  surrounded  him;  and  he  was  well  aware  that 
what  might  be  called  "miracle"  enthusiasm  was 
not  the  soundest  inspiration  for  English  statesman- 
ship at  such  a  time.  It  would  have  been  idle  to 
preach  up  a  crusade  against  the  despotic  Govern- 
ments of  Europe;  and  what  Canning  recommended 
was  always  a  task  which  could  be  accomplished  with- 
out extravagant  risk  to  the  fortunes  of  the  state 
whose  foreign  policy  was  for  the  time  in  his  keeping. 
Then,  again,  we  have  to  take  into  consideration 
that  there  were  two  forces  arrayed  against  each  other 
at  that  epoch  in  Europe  with  neither  of  which  Can- 
ning could  thoroughly  sympathise.  There  was  des- 
potism on  the  one  side,  and  what  has  been  called 
"  the  revolution  "  on  the  other.  Stuart  Mill,  at  a 
time  very  near  to  our  own,  objected  strongly  to  such 
a  vague  phraseology  as  that  which  was  in  the  habit 
of  talking  of  "  the  revolution  "  as  some  definite 
movement.  No  doubt  it  would  be  much  better  in 
all  writing  and  speaking  to  avoid  vague  and  grand- 
iose phraseology,  and  to  define  clearly  in  our  expres- 
sions the  precise  idea  which  we  mean  to  convey. 
Still,  when  people  in  Canning's  day,  and  in  a  much 
later  day,  talked  of  the  revolution,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  phrase  carried  with  it  a  certain  mean- 
ing intelligible  enough,  although  not  capable  of 
scientific  or  political  definition.  When  men  in  Can- 
ning's day  spoke  of  the  revolution,  they  meant, 
and  were  well  understood  to  mean,  the  movement 


GEORGE   CANNING  IO5 

against  despotism,  and,  indeed,  against  all  monarchy, 
the  movement  which  had  been  engendered  by  des- 
potism itself,  and  which  threatened  at  one  time  the 
foundations  of  all  monarchy.  This  is,  in  fact,  the 
revolution  which  is  hymned  in  the  impassioned  verses 
of  the  "  Marseillaise."  With  that  sort  of  revolution 
a  man  of  Canning's  temperament  and  training  could 
have  but  little  sympathy.  Canning  saw  that  while 
there  were  excesses  on  the  one  side  there  were  ex- 
cesses also  on  the  other;  and  the  memory  of  the 
French  Revolution,  led  as  a  crusade  by  Napoleon 
against  the  monarchical  systems  of  Europe,  was  a 
living  memory  in  the  minds  of  all  men. 

Canning  knew  how  every  word  he  spoke  as  Foreign 
Secretary  of  England  on  a  momentous  occasion 
when  peace  and  war  were  in  the  balance  would  be 
quoted  and  weighed  by  the  advocates  of  the  despots 
and  by  the  advocates  of  the  revolution.  He  had  in 
his  mind,  first  of  all,  the  interests  of  England  and 
the  interests  of  peace ;  and  he  was  determined  not 
to  say  a  word  which  would  give  to  either  side  the 
hope  of  a  support  that  it  was  not  in  his  power  to 
make  good.  He  was  always  a  cautious  statesman; 
and  his  early  impulses  were  not  in  any  case  such  as 
would  have  led  him  into  strong  sympathy  with  the 
popular  side  of  any  great  question.  He  became  a 
supporter  of  Catholic  emancipation ;  but  he  was  not 
a  supporter  of  popular  reform.  He  was  cautious, 
even  on  the  subject  of  West  Indian  slavery;  and 
he  did  not  see  his  way  to  go  any  farther  than  the 
recommendation  of  such  measures  as  might  tend  to 
mitigate  the  evils  of  such  a  system. 


106  GEORGE   CANNING 

Canning  was,  indeed,  guided  on  all  political  sub- 
jects and  on  most  social  questions  by  his  intellect 
and  by  his  reason  rather  than  by  his  sympathies  and 
his  emotion.  He  was,  in  fact,  just  the  man  to  direct 
the  destinies  of  England  at  a  time  of  such  terrible 
risk;  and  if  he  was  not  exactly  an  enthusiast,  it  has 
to  be  said  that  he  lived  through  a  crisis  when  en- 
thusiasm of  the  romantic  order  was  a  far  less  valu- 
able quality  in  a  statesman  than  the  judgment  which 
sees  what  can  be  done,  and  the  courage  which  main- 
tains such  a  judgment  in  action.  Thus  his  policy 
had  always  the  advantage  of  being  practical  and  of 
applying  itself  to  definite  ends.  Others  might  have 
preached  peace  in  language  more  touching  ;  he 
secured  peace.  Others  might  have  spoken  loftier 
words  in  support  of  liberty;  he  gave  liberty  every- 
where a  chance  for  its  existence. 

Canning's  attitude  towards  the  revolution  cannot 
be  better  described  than  in  a  few  sentences  which 
we  quote  from  an  admirable  monograph  by  Mr. 
Frank  H.  Hill.  "  Canning,"  says  Mr.  Hill,  "  while 
welcoming  national  uprisings  against  foreign  or  ex- 
ternal domination  in  Spain,  in  Greece,  in  South 
America,  objected  to  the  propaganda  by  pen  or  by 
sword  of  French  principles  or  ideas  in  other  coun- 
tries. In  theory  he  did  not  contend  for  the  sup- 
pression of  French  principles  in  France.  They 
might  be  good  there,  though  he  did  not  think 
they  were ;  but  they  were  bad  elsewhere,  because 
they  were  out  of  relation  with  the  existing  moral 
and  social  order,  and  with  the  traditions  which  have 
become  a  part,  not  only  of  the  general  life  of  the 


GEORGE  CANNING  JO? 

nation,  but  of  the  individual  life  of  everyone  in 
it." 

Canning  was,  in  fact,  the  founder  of  modern 
Greek  liberty.  The  rule  of  Turkey  was  becoming 
intolerable  to  the  Greeks.  Russia  favoured  and  fo- 
mented the  national  uprising  of  the  Greeks  against 
their  Turkish  oppressors.  The  sympathy  of  these 
countries  was  given  almost  universally  to  the  cause 
of  the  Greek  patriots.  Lord  Byron  threw  his  whole 
soul  into  their  cause  and  lost  his  gallant  life  for  it, 
not  even,  as  he  fondly  desired,  dying  sword  in  hand 
for  Greece  on  a  Greek  battle-field,  but  perishing  pre- 
maturely of  fever  among  the  swamps  of  Missolonghi. 
Lord  Cochrane  lent  all  the  generous  ardour  of  his 
energetic  nature  to  support  the  Greeks  in  their 
struggle.  An  immense  wave  of  popular  sympathy 
with  Greece  passed  over  this  country.  Numbers  of 
brave  and  brilliant  young  men  went  over  from  Lon- 
don, from  all  parts  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  to 
help  the  Greeks  in  their  struggle. 

Lord  John  Russell  told  the  House  of  Commons, 
many  years  after,  of  the  manner  in  which,  regard- 
less of  the  strict  letter  of  international  law,  he  and 
other  sympathisers  had  openly  helped  to  raise  re- 
cruits in  England  for  the  support  of  the  cause  of 
Greek  independence.  The  nation  became  young 
again  in  its  generous  sympathy  with  Greece.  Every- 
one, it  would  seem,  who  had  been  inspired  in  his 
youth  by  the  reading  of  a  Greek  classic  poem  or  the 
sight  of  a  Greek  statue  felt  himself  inflamed  with 
the  passion  for  the  Greek  cause,  and  thousands  who 
had  never  seen  the  Acropolis  or  the  waves  that  wash 


108  GEORGE   CANNING 

the  shore  of  Salamis  felt  as  if  they  could  gladly  die 
to  drive  the  Turks  from  the  sacred  soil.  But  the 
struggle  of  the  Greeks  did  not  prosper  for  all  that. 
Despite  the  brilliant  and  daring  exploits  of  men  like 
Bozzaris  on  the  shore,  or  Kanaris  with  his  fire-ships 
on  the  sea,  there  seemed  little  chance  of  driving  out 
what  Byron  calls  the  Turkish  hordes. 

The  Greeks  had  not  a  disciplined  army ;  they  had 
a  poor  stock  of  munitions  of  war ;  and  their  resources 
everywhere  were  stinted.  Russia  favoured  their 
cause ;  and  it  seemed  more  than  probable  that  Russia 
in  the  last  resource  would  send  her  armies  to  deal 
with  the  Turks.  It  was  not  the  purpose  of  Canning 
that  things  should  come  to  such  a  pass  as  that.  His 
sympathies  went  with  the  cause  of  Greek  independ- 
ence; but  he  dreaded  the  risk  of  a  European  war; 
and  he  could  not  tell  where  the  leadership  of  Russia 
in  such  a  struggle  might  end.  Therefore,  he  arranged 
and  concluded  a  treaty  in  which  Russia  and  France 
with  England  had  a  share,  and  the  avowed  object 
of  which  was  that  each  of  these  great  Powers  should 
send  some  of  her  battle-ships  into  Greek  waters,  in 
order,  if  we  may  put  it  so,  to  see  fair  play — in  more 
serious  words,  to  take  care  that  Turkey  was  not 
allowed  to  push  her  successes  to  the  utter  ruin  of 
Greece. 

In  the  meantime,  the  principal  fighting  on  the 
Turkish  side  was  done  by  Ibrahim  Pasha,  the 
adopted  son  of  Mohammed  Ali,  who  governed 
Egypt  as  a  vassal  sovereign  under  the  Sultan  of 
Turkey.  Ibrahim  Pasha  was  a  man  of  something 
like  genius  and  of  great  fighting  power.  The  Turk- 


LORD   BYRON. 
From  a  painting  by  Richard  Westall,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


GEORGE   CANNING  IOO, 

ish  and  the  Egyptian  navies  were  concentrating  their 
forces  against  the  Greek  shores.  Admiral  Sir  Ed- 
ward Codrington  was  in  command  of  the  English 
battle-ships.  Accidents  are  always  happening  in 
such  cases;  and  somehow  or  other  it  came  about 
that  the  English,  French,  and  Russian  ships  of  war 
made  a  swoop  on  the  vessels  of  Turkey  and  Egypt. 
Now,  there  is  a  story  told  concerning  this  "  un- 
toward event,"  as  it  was  afterwards  described  in  a 
formal  document — a  story  which  may  not  be  actu- 
ally true,  but  which  was  in  wide  circulation  at  the 
time  and  for  long  after,  and  it  is  at  all  events  too 
good  to  be  lost  altogether.  The  story  was  to  the 
effect  that  the  English  Government  drew  up  a  de- 
spatch addressed  to  Sir  Edward  Codrington  and 
recommending,  according  to  the  formal  diplomatic 
fashion,  that  he  should  use  extreme  caution,  not 
allow  rashness  ever  to  prevail  over  prudence,  and  so 
forth;  and  that  this  document  was  forwarded  to 
Admiral  Codrington  by  the  Duke  of  Clarence, 
brother  of  George  IV.,  and  at  that  time  Lord  High 
Admiral ;  and  that  the  Duke  scribbled  in  pencil  with 
his  own  hand,  at  the  end  of  the  despatch,  the  three 
words,  "  Go  it,  Ned !  "  Whether  the  story  be  true 
or  not,  it  is  certain  that  "  Ned,"  Admiral  Codring- 
ton, that  is,  did  go  it,  and  that  on  the  2Oth  of  Oc- 
tober, 1827,  the  Turkish  and  Egyptian  war- vessels 
were  swept  off  the  seas,  and  the  Sultan  had  to  con- 
sent to  the  establishment  of  Greece  as  a  separate 
kingdom.  Canning,  however,  did  not  live  to  see 
this  sudden  triumph  of  his  policy;  he  died  before 
the  battle  of  Navarino,  that  famous  unexpected 


110  GEORGE   CANNING 

battle  by  which  the  independence  of  Greece  was 
accomplished. 

Canning's  health  had  been  failing  of  late  years. 
He  was  now  the  constant  object  of  the  bitterest  at- 
tacks made  by  the  Tories  in  both  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment. He  began  to  feel  the  force  of  these  attacks 
more  than  he  would  have  done  in  his  younger  and 
more  elastic  years.  Especially  he  felt  the  attacks 
when  they  were  made  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and 
were  made  by  men  of  intellect  and  influence — by 
Lord  Grey,  for  example,  who  was  certainly  not  a  Tory, 
and  who  agreed  in  opinion  with  Canning  on  many 
subjects,  but  who  lent  the  weight  of  his  eloquence 
and  his  power  to  the  Tory  attacks  for  no  other  rea- 
son, apparently,  than  because  Canning  did  not  go  so 
far  in  the  liberalism  of  domestic  politics  as  Lord  Grey 
would  have  wished  him  to  go.  Canning,  too,  found  a 
difficulty  in  answering  Lord  Grey  and  other  assailants 
among  the  peers,  because  Canning,  of  course,  was  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  it  was  not  the  usage,  and 
is  not  the  usage  still,  for  a  member  of  one  House  to  re- 
ply directly  to  a  speech  made  in  the  other.  Canning, 
as  we  have  said  already,  was,  even  at  the  opening  of  his 
career  when  he  was  young  and  strong,  too  sensitive 
for  his  own  happiness ;  and  now,  when  he  was  sinking 
into  years,  he  felt  hardly  able  to  bear  up  against  the 
attacks  to  which  he  could  scarcely  even  offer  a  reply. 

In  companionship  with  his  friend  Huskisson,  Can- 
ning set  to  work  to  remodel  the  financial  system  of 
England.  The  modes  in  which  taxation  was  im- 
posed, whether  by  customs  duties  or  inland  duties, 
seemed  to  Canning  and  Huskisson  to  be  utterly 


GEORGE   CANNING  III 

antiquated  and  unsuitable  to  modern  days,  cumbrous 
in  their  workings  and  miserably  barren  in  their  re- 
sults. Up  to  Canning's  time  there  was  nothing  that 
might  be  called  a  scientific  principle  or  even  a  scien- 
tific theory  about  the  imposition  of  duties  and  the 
levying  of  taxation.  There  were  Financial  Minis- 
ters, even  in  Canning's  time,  who,  if  on  some  sudden 
emergency  a  double  amount  of  revenue  was  needed, 
had  no  other  idea  of  how  to  get  at  it  than  by  simply 
doubling  the  amount  of  some  particular  tax.  It  did 
not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  them  that  there  are 
limits  beyond  which  you  cannot  tax  any  particular 
class  of  persons,  and  that  it  is  always  open  to  a  citi- 
zen to  do  without  some  article  altogether  rather 
than  pay  too  high  a  price  for  it.  Either  you  must 
levy  on  articles  of  necessity  or  on  articles  of  luxury. 
If  you  put  too  heavy  a  tax  upon  articles  of  luxury, 
most  people  will  go  without  them  and  save  their 
money.  If  you  put  too  heavy  a  tax  on  articles  of 
necessity,  as  on  food,  for  instance,  a  great  many 
people  will  starve  and  die,  or  else  there  will  be  an 
uprising  in  the  land.  Many  of  England's  greatest 
troubles,  after  the  peace  that  followed  on  the  fall  of 
Napoleon,  were  caused  by  the  struggles  of  men 
whom  the  fear  of  starvation  had  driven  into  insur- 
rection. Such  systems  of  taxation,  if  pressed  too 
far,  would  have  helped  to  bring  about  a  revolution 
in  England,  as  they  had  already  done  in  France. 
Canning  and  Huskisson  set  themselves  to  reduce 
this  hideous  financial  chaos  into  order;  and  to  estab- 
lish something  like  a  scientific  principle,  a  sound 
economic  principle,  in  the  arrangements  of  taxation. 


112  GEORGE   CANNING 

Canning  and  Huskisson  were  close  friends ;  they 
had  come  into  political  life  and  into  power  about 
the  same  time ;  they  both,  alike,  could  see  beyond 
the  economics  of  their  age ;  they  were  both,  alike, 
hated  and  denounced  because  they  had  made  their 
way  into  high  Ministerial  office  by  the  force  of  in- 
tellect and  capacity,  without  family  influence  and 
without  royal  patronage.  Huskisson,  as  well  as 
Canning,  was  commonly  called  an  adventurer  by  his 
political  enemies,  simply  because,  although  he  came 
of  a  good  family,  he  had  not  had  aristocratic  patron- 
age or  Court  favour  to  help  him  on  his  way.  These 
two  men,  then,  worked  together;  and  had  many  a 
trying  time  of  it  together.  Canning's  mind  was 
made  anxious,  towards  the  close  of  his  career,  by 
his  strong  conviction  that  the  question  of  Catholic 
emancipation  would  soon  have  to  be  dealt  with  in 
a  sense  favourable  to  the  Catholic  claims.  On  this 
point  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  he  parted  com- 
pany. Wellington  was  then  unbending  in  his  oppo- 
sition to  the  Catholic  claims,  although,  as  we  shall 
see  before  long,  his  influence  was  destined  to  be  final 
in  securing  the  concession  of  those  claims.  But  at 
the  time  to  which  we  have  now  come,  Wellington 
would  not  give  way,  and  Canning  would  not  give 
way.  Canning  pleaded  powerfully  in  the  House  of 
Commons  for  the  claims  of  the  Catholics,  and  Wel- 
lington resigned  his  office  as  Prime  Minister.  There 
was  a  complete  break-up  of  the  Cabinet.  Peel  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  Wellington ;  and  a  new  Ministry 
had  to  be  constructed. 

Canning  was,  under  all  the  circumstances,  what 


GEORGE   CANNING  113 

Lord  Palmerston  at  a  later  day  described  himself  to 
be,  the  inevitable  man.  Lord  Eldon,  of  course,  re- 
signed his  place  as  Lord  Chancellor ;  he  was  always 
resigning  or  threatening  to  resign;  but  now  that 
Canning  appeared  to  be  the  inevitable  Prime  Minis- 
ter, he  turned  the  threat  into  a  reality.  Canning 
was  entrusted  by  the  King  with  the  task  of  forming 
an  Administration.  The  King  was  not  very  willing 
to  make  the  offer,  but  there  was  practically  no  altern- 
ative ;  and  therefore  Canning  became  Prime  Minis- 
ter. His  friend  Huskisson  had  stood  by  his  side 
in  the  stand  he  made  upon  the  Catholic  claims; 
and  Huskisson  now  stood  by  his  side  in  the  new 
Administration. 

Canning's  tenure  of  office  was  destined  to  be  but 
short.  Canning  and  Huskisson  were  both  in  very 
feeble  health.  Huskisson  was  ordered  abroad  by 
his  medical  attendant ;  Canning,  also,  was  urged  to 
go  abroad  and  take  rest,  and  thus  get  some  chance 
of  recovering  his  health ;  but  he  felt  that  it  would 
be  impossible  for  him  to  leave  his  post  at  the  time, 
and  he  resolutely  determined  to  remain  at  home. 
His  physical  condition  had  been  greatly  injured  not 
long  before,  by  his  attendance  at  the  burial  of  the 
Duke  of  York.  The  Duke  of  York  was  the  brother 
of  the  King,  and  stood  nearest  in  the  succession  to 
the  throne.  He  had  been  consistently  and  persist- 
ently opposed  to  all  the  political  principles  and  pur- 
poses which  had  guided  Canning's  whole  Ministerial 
career.  The  nation  felt  but  little  regret  at  the  re- 
moval of  the  Duke  of  York,  whose  personal  defects 
might  be  excused  or  explained,  and  therefore  par- 

VOL.   I.— 8 


114  GEORGE   CANNING 

doned,  but  whose  obstinacy  and  perversity  in  public 
affairs  were  a  serious  obstruction  to  every  onward 
and  popular  movement.  Canning  felt  all  the  more 
bound  to  attend  the  funeral.  The  day  was  cold  and 
damp  in  dismal  January ;  the  chapel  was  miserably 
chill  and  full  of  draughts ;  and  the  whole  lengthened 
ceremonial  sent  a  shock  to  Canning's  nerves,  and  to 
his  general  physical  system.  Canning  never  rallied 
from  the  shock  and  the  chill  of  that  dreary  solemn- 
ity. He  struggled  indeed  against  his  approaching 
illness  as  well  as  he  could  ;  and  even  when  his  friend 
Huskisson  called  to  see  him,  in  order  to  take  leave 
of  him  before  going  abroad,  Canning  bore  up  bravely 
and  cheerily,  and  tried  to  make  his  old  comrade  be- 
lieve that  it  was  but  a  passing  infirmity  which  kept 
him  a  prisoner  in  his  room.  Two  days  after  Huskis- 
son had  left  him,  Canning  removed  to  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire's  villa  at  Chiswick ;  and  a  few  days  after, 
his  life  came  to  an  end  there.  He  died  on  the  8th 
of  August,  1827,  in  the  very  room  where  Charles 
James  Fox  had  died  not  so  many  years  before.  The 
whole  nation  mourned  his  untimely  death.  Canning 
was  but  little  more  than  fifty-seven  years  old  when 
his  great  career  came  to  a  close. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  then  called  upon  to 
form  an  Administration.  Some  measures  of  politi- 
cal importance  marked  the  course  of  the  Duke's 
tenure  of  office,  but  for  the  present  we  are  chiefly 
concerned  with  one  event  which  might  almost  be 
said  to  belong  to  the  career  of  Mr.  Canning.  There 
were  differences  of  opinion  in  the  Cabinet  on  many 
questions ;  and  especially  on  those  with  which  the 


WELLINGTON. 
(Siborne's  "History  of  the  Waterloo  Campaign") 


GEORGE   CANNING  115 

name  of  Canning  was  particularly  associated.  Hus- 
kisson  made  a  speech  at  Liverpool  in  addressing  his 
constituents  there,  which  led  to  a  serious  dispute 
between  Wellington  and  himself.  Huskisson  told, 
or  was  reported  to  have  told,  his  constituents  at 
Liverpool  that  he  never  would  have  taken  office 
under  the  Duke  of  Wellington  if  he  had  not  obtained 
from  the  Duke  an  ample  guarantee  that  the  policy 
of  Canning  on  financial  and  other  questions  was  to 
be  faithfully  carried  out.  Wellington,  with  his  usual 
bluntness,  repudiated  any  such  idea;  threw  con- 
tempt upon  the  suggestion  that  any  gentleman  to 
whom  he  had  tendered  office  could  think  of  insisting 
on  any  such  guarantee,  or  making  a  guarantee  of 
any  kind  a  condition  of  accepting  a  place  in  the  new 
Administration. 

The  Duke,  however,  suggested  that  what  Mr. 
Huskisson  probably  did  say  in  Liverpool  was  that 
he  found  in  the  composition  of  the  Cabinet  itself  a 
sufficient  guarantee  that  its  measures  of  policy  would 
be  such  as  to  promote  the  best  interests  of  the 
Sovereign  and  the  country.  Huskisson  hastened  to 
explain  that  this  was  really  what  he  did  mean,  and 
even  what  he  did  say;  and  the  matter  might  not 
have  seemed  very  important  at  the  moment,  but  it 
led  to  important  consequences.  Huskisson's  popu- 
larity undoubtedly  suffered  by  this  dispute ;  some  of 
his  best  friends  thought  that  he  had  not  done  well 
when  he  consented  to  take  office  under  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  in  companionship  with  other  men  who 
were  avowed  opponents  of  Canning's  general  policy. 
Huskisson  himself  began  to  fear  that  he  had  prob- 


Il6  GEORGE   CANNING 

ably  made  a  mistake  by  consenting  to  resume  office 
after  Canning's  death. 

In  any  case,  there  was  undoubted  antagonism  be- 
tween the  principles  of  Canning,  which  were  also  the 
principles  of  Huskisson,  and  those  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  and  other  members  of  the  Cabinet. 
The  first  dispute  or  misunderstanding  led  to  another 
dispute  or  misunderstanding;  and  Huskisson  in  a 
moment  of  anger  sent  in  what  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton understood  to  be  a  point-blank  resignation  of  his 
office.  Huskisson  had  not,  perhaps,  meant  so  much 
as  this ;  and  some  friends  of  his,  and  of  Wellington, 
endeavoured  to  bring  about  their  reconciliation. 
But  the  Duke  held  firmly  or  obstinately  to  his  pur- 
pose. He  insisted  upon  it  that  Huskisson  had  re- 
signed his  office,  and  that  there  was  nothing  more 
to  be  said  in  the  matter.  Therefore,  there  was  an 
end  of  Huskisson's  connection  with  the  Wellington 
Administration,  and  the  impression  conveyed  to 
many  minds  in  the  country  was  that  he  had  been 
rudely  hustled  out  of  office,  simply  because  he  was 
a  faithful  friend  and  supporter  of  Canning;  while 
others  regarded  the  matter  in  a  light  less  favourable 
to  Huskisson,  and  insisted  that  he  had  resigned  in 
a  fit  of  spleen,  had  then  endeavoured  to  make  his 
excuses  and  get  back  into  office  again,  and  had  met 
with  a  contemptuous  and  insulting  refusal  from  the 
Duke  of  Wellington.  The  whole  incident  created 
a  great  sensation  throughout  the  country — satirists 
and  caricaturists  made  much  capital  out  of  it,  and 
even  so  long  after  the  event  as  the  publication  of 
Bulwer  Lytton's  novel,  Paul  Clifford,  it  was  found 


.       GEORGE   CANNING  1 1/ 

that  the  novelist  had  constructed  a  comic  song  out 
of  the  whole  controversy;  turned  it  into  a  quarrel 
about  the  possession  of  a  glass  of  liquor,  which 
Huskisson  in  a  hasty  moment  passed  to  one  of  his 
comrades,  thinly  disguised  under  the  name  of  Fight- 
ing Attie,  and  was  vainly  endeavouring  to  get  back 
again,  Fighting  Attie  contemptuously  advising  him 
to  "  Cease  your  dust,"  and  telling  him,  "  You  have 
resigned  it,  and  you  must."  On  the  whole,  the 
opinion  of  impartial  posterity  always  has  been  that 
Huskisson  never  ought  to  have  accepted  a  place  in 
the  Administration  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  No 
one  could  have  questioned  or  doubted  the  purity  of 
his  motive;  Huskisson  joined  the  Wellington  Ad- 
ministration because  he  sincerely  believed  that  he 
might  be  the  means  of  influencing  the  Duke  and 
others  of  his  colleagues  in  favour  of  more  liberal 
measures  of  policy  in  finance  and  in  various  matters. 
There  was  some  reason  for  such  a  belief.  Canning 
had  carried  his  point  with  more  than  one  reluctant 
Ministry. 

We  shall  soon  see  how  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
himself  came  to  abandon  a  long-maintained  position, 
and  to  surrender  to  the  policy  of  Catholic  emancipa- 
tion. But  Huskisson  had  hardly  an  influence  strong 
enough  to  accomplish  the  work  which  might  pos- 
sibly have  been  done  by  a  man  with  the  strength  of 
Canning.  Much  of  the  good  work  that  he  had  done 
was  accomplished  at  Canning's  impulse,  and  under 
Canning's  guidance.  It  would  have  been  better  if 
he  had  held  back  at  the  time  when  death,  withdraw- 
ing from  office  his  illustrious  friend  and  leader,  had 


Il8  GEORGE   CANNING 

C" 

given  an  opportunity  for  the  formation  of  a  Ministry 
under  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Huskisson,  if  he 
had  lived  long  enough,  must  have  found  his  place, 
and  have  borne  a  helping  hand  in  still  further  pro- 
moting the  policy  of  his  great  friend  and  leader. 
But  however  that  may  be,  the  names  of  Canning 
and  Huskisson  will  be  always  associated  in  the  his- 
tory of  these  countries;  and  the  fame  of  the  one 
man  is  as  stainless  as  that  of  the  other. 


CHAPTER  VII 

RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL,  on  the  26th  of  Febru- 
ary, 1828,  may  be  said  to  have  practically 
begun  his  great  career  as  a  reform  leader  by  bring- 
ing forward  a  motion  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
the  subject  of  what  were  called  the  Test  and  Corpor- 
ation Acts.  These  Acts  made  up  a  little  code  of 
legislation,  intended  to  exclude  Dissenters  from  any 
manner  of  State  or  public  office,  or  from  being 
elected  as  members  of  any  municipal  corporation. 
The  form  of  exclusion  was  the  imposition  of  a 
clumsily  jumbled  sort  of  oath,  which  exacted  from 
the  Dissenter,  as  a  condition  precedent  to  his  ac- 
ceptance of  office,  or  his  election  to  a  municipal 
board,  that  he  should  renounce  all  the  religious 
principles  in  which  he  believed,  and  certain  religious 
principles,  also,  in  which  he  did  not  believe,  be- 
cause the  oath  was  a  kind  of  double-barrelled  weapon, 
which  aimed  at  once  at  the  Dissenters  and  the  Roman 
Catholics.  Russell's  was  the  first  serious  and  im- 
portant attack  on  the  whole  barrier  of  religious  test 
as  a  qualification  for  admission  to  public  employment 
or  occupation. 

119 


120  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

We  have  to  throw  our  minds  a  long  way  back  in 
time  if  we  would  endeavour  to  understand  the  con- 
dition of  things  under  which  it  was  seriously  thought 
necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  State  that  a  Dissenter 
should  be  cut  off  from  some  of  the  most  important 
rights  of  citizenship.  Indeed,  it  is  very  doubtful 
whether  the  average  mind  of  the  present  day  could 
be  got,  without  some  curious  process  of  transforma- 
tion, to  comprehend  the  meaning  and  the  motives  of 
such  a  policy.  There,  however,  the  policy  was  down 
to  the  year  1828, — a  year  which  many  living  men  can 
still  remember, — and  Lord  John  Russell  was  thought 
by  most  a  very  bold  man,  and  by  some  a  very  wicked 
man,  because  he  had  set  his  heart  on  the  abolition 
of  so  antiquated,  so  uncivilised,  and  so  unchristian 
a  principle.  Lord  John  Russell  pointed  out  in  his 
speech  that  the  legislation  which  he  condemned 
had,  whether  it  were  bad  or  good,  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  the  actual  conditions  of  the  times  at 
which  he  and  his  contemporaries  had  arrived. 

One  can  understand  how  the  kings  of  a  former 
dynasty  might  fancy  that  their  thrones  were  made 
more  secure  by  excluding  Dissenters  from  all  prac- 
tical share  in  public  affairs.  That  might  be  a  very 
sound  idea ;  it  might  be  the  root  of  a  policy  which 
deserved  to  be  condemned  by  rational  persons,  but 
at  least  its  object  could  be  understood.  The  House 
of  Commons,  however,  had  found  in  the  Dissenters 
some  of  its  most  loyal  subjects,  and  one  might  have 
thought  it  would  be  the  business  even  of  a  selfish 
legislature  to  encourage  and  support  them  as  much 
as  possible. 


-  c 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  121 

Lord  John  Russell's  speech  made  an  undoubted 
effect  upon  the  House,  and  was  an  admirable  prelude 
to  other  great  reform  speeches  of  his,  which  we 
shall  have  to  take  account  of  later  on.  The  Govern- 
ment opposed  the  motion,  and  the  Opposition  was 
led  by  Mr.  Peel,  afterwards  famous  as  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  and,  strange  to  say,  by  Mr.  Huskisson.  Mr. 
Peel  in  those  days  was  still  an  unbending  opponent 
of  reform  in  most  directions ;  but  the  only  explana- 
tion of  Mr.  Huskisson's  position  is  probably  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  he  was  strongly  in  favour  of 
relieving  the  Catholics  from  their  disqualifications ; 
and  he  feared  lest  the  Dissenters,  if  separately  re- 
lieved and  in  the  first  instance,  might  become  less 
earnest  and  less  energetic  on  the  general  subject  of 
restrictions  imposed  on  all  who  did  not  belong  to 
the  Established  Church.  Despite  all  opposition, 
Russell's  motion  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  forty- 
four,  in  a  House  where  four  hundred  and  thirty 
members  went  into  the  division  lobbies.  Many 
efforts  were  made  to  amend  the  bill  brought  in  by 
Lord  John  Russell  as  the  result  of  the  passing  of  his 
resolution ;  but  they  did  not  make  any  serious  differ- 
ence in  the  proposed  reform,  and  the  measure  was 
carried  through  the  Commons,  and  sent  up  to  the 
House  of  Lords. 

Some  of  the  archbishops  and  the  bishops  in  that 
House  were  so  liberal  in  the  construction  of  their 
duties  as  actually  to  support  the  bill,  much  to  the 
horror  of  Lord  Eldon,  who  must  surely  have  thought 
at  the  time  that  the  world  was  coming  to  an  end. 
Lord  Eldon  bemoaned  the  national  calamity  that 


122  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

such  a  bill  should  have  been  introduced  by  the 
Government;  but  he  added,  "  what  is  most  calami- 
tous of  all,  is  that  the  Archbishops  and  several  of 
the  Bishops  are  also  against  us.  What  they  can 
mean,"  he  declared,  "  they  best  know,  for  nobody 
else  can  tell;  and  sooner  or  later,  perhaps  in  this 
very  year,  almost  certainly  in  the  next,  the  conces- 
sions to  the  Dissenters  must  be  followed  by  the  like 
concessions  to  the  Roman  Catholics." 

Lord  Eldon  was  quite  right.  To  do  him  justice, 
his  worst  bigotry  never  utterly  dimmed  his  clearness 
of  vision,  and  he  knew  well,  what  some,  even  of  the 
supporters  of  the  bill,  did  not  quite  know,  that  it 
would  be  impossible  to  strike  the  shackles  off  the 
limbs  of  the  Dissenters  and  composedly  leave  them 
for  ever  on  the  limbs  of  the  Roman  Catholics.  There 
is  always  something  interesting  to  the  living  student 
of  history  in  the  spoken  and  written  utterances  of 
Lord  Eldon  on  such  a  subject.  First  it  is  interest- 
ing, as  a  mere  matter  of  curiosity,  for  a  reader  of  the 
present  day  to  be  brought  into  contact  with  so  com- 
plete and  all-round  a  bigot  as  Lord  Eldon ;  and  next 
it  is  interesting  to  see  how  Lord  Eldon  never  failed 
to  understand  the  uselessness  and  the  futility  of  his 
own  bigotry.  He  never  lulled  himself  for  a  moment, 
as  so  many  of  his  contemporary  bigots  did,  into  the 
fond  belief  that  he  could  stem  the  tide  of  liberal  re- 
form in  religious  and  political  affairs.  He  performed 
his  duty  with  the  full  conviction  that  the  perform- 
ance would  not  have  the  slightest  effect  in  keeping 
back  the  movement  which  he  strove  to  resist. 

If  it  were  not  something  too  whimsical  to  compare 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  123 

the  tough  old  Tory  with  a  pretty  and  winsome 
maiden,  it  might  be  said  that  Lord  Eldon  was  now 
performing  a  part  like  that  of  the  high-born  Scottish 
damsel,  renowned  in  the  history  of  Scotland,  who 
made  of  her  slender  arm  a  bolt  to  hold  the  King's 
door  against  the  fierce  conspirators  who  were  batter- 
ing from  the  outside,  well  knowing  that  the  frail 
barricade  must  be  splintered  and  smashed  without 
delaying  for  half  a  moment  the  entrance  of  the 
traitors.  Yet  Lord  Eldon  might  have  been  com- 
forted if  he  could  only  have  known  that,  although 
the  bill  was  destined  to  pass,  it  would,  at  all  events, 
be  made  in  itself  an  instrument  to  maintain  for  a 
little  longer  a  system  of  intolerance,  which  was 
probably  not  in  Lord  Eldon's  mind  when  he  was 
denouncing  the  admission  of  Dissenters  to  civil 
office,  and  foretelling,  as  a  consequence,  the  admis- 
sion of  Roman  Catholics. 

One  of  the  bishops  proposed  to  add  to  the  new 
form  of  oath  certain  words  proclaiming  a  belief  in 
our  common  Christianity.  Accordingly,  after  much 
debate,  the  words  were  inserted,  "  on  the  true  faith 
of  a  Christian."  One  of  the  peers  who  bore  an 
honoured  name,  Lord  Holland,  entered  his  protest 
on  the  books  of  the  House  against  this  so-called 
amendment.  It  should  be  explained  that,  by  ancient 
usage,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Peers  has  the 
right  of  recording  on  the  books  of  that  House  his 
protest  against  any  particular  decision,  and  his 
reasons  for  protesting;  while  no  such  custom  pre- 
vails, or  right  exists,  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
The  protests  of  the  Lords,  therefore,  form  an  in- 


124  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

teresting  and  important  part  of  our  parliamentary 
history;  they  note  the  growth,  very  slow  growth 
indeed,  of  sound  political  principles,  even  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  A  member  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, now  some  years  dead,  Mr.  Thorold  Rogers, 
compiled  a  little  work  on  the  subject,  which  is  well 
worth  the  consideration  of  all  students  of  our  his- 
tory. We  may  quote  here  the  words  in  which  Lord 
Holland  explains  and  justifies  his  protest.  "  Be- 
cause the  introduction  of  the  words,  '  upon  the  true 
faith  of  a  Christian,'  implies  an  opinion  in  which  I 
cannot  conscientiously  concur — namely,  that  a  par- 
ticular faith  in  matters  of  religion  is  necessary  to  the 
proper  discharge  of  duties  purely  political  or  tem- 
poral." The  amendment  adopted  by  the  Lords 
was  accepted  by  the  Commons,  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  May  the  whole  measure  received  the  Royal 
Assent. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  words,  "  on  the 
true  faith  of  a  Christian,"  were  used  until  a  com- 
paratively recent  date  as  the  means  of  shutting  out 
the  whole  of  our  Jewish  fellow-citizens  from  the 
right  of  representation  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Had  Lord  John  Russell's  measure  been  carried  as  it 
was  designed  by  him,  England  would  have  been 
spared  session  after  session  of  an  ignoble  and  futile 
struggle  against  the  admission  of  Jews  to  Parlia- 
ment. Until  the  final  struggle  within  the  memories 
of  most  of  us,  a  Jew  might  exercise,  and  could  not 
be  kept  from  exercising,  the  highest  influence  in 
public  affairs;  but  he  could  not  become  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  might  advance 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  12$ 

money  to  princes  and  kings;  he  might  finance  a 
foreign  policy,  and  raise  loans  to  supply  the  muni- 
tions of  war  —  he  was  always  welcome  to  perform 
services  like  these ;  but  he  could  not  pass  the  Bar  of 
the  Representative  Chamber;  he  could  not  open  his 
mouth  in  that  Chamber  or  go  into  the  lobby,  either 
with  the  Ayes  or  with  the  Noes.  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell, however,  had  struck  his  first  blow  against  the 
policy  of  sectarian  exclusion,  and  the  portals  were, 
as  a  result,  to  be  thrown  open  in  the  end  to  all  duly 
elected  comers,  without  distinction  of  creed  or  class. 

The  agitation  for  the  emancipation  of  Roman 
Catholics  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  began  with 
renewed  force  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of 
George  III.  It  has  been  already  shown  in  these 
pages  that  George  III.  had  resisted  every  effort 
made  by  William  Pitt  to  introduce  any  measure  for 
the  relief  of  Roman  Catholics  from  the  unjust, 
ignoble,  and  absurd  penalties  imposed  on  them  by 
English  legislation.  With  the  coming  of  George 
IV.  to  the  throne,  new  hopes  were  excited  in  the 
minds  of  the  Catholics,  especially  of  the  Irish  Catho- 
lics, because  of  the  liberal  tendencies  which  George 
had  shown  at  one  time,  and  because  of  his  associa- 
tion with  Fox  and  Sheridan  and  other  friends  of 
religious  liberty  all  over  the  world. 

It  seems  extraordinary,  now,  to  think  that  at  a 
period  so  near  to  our  own,  a  Roman  Catholic  was 
still  prevented  from  sitting  in  Parliament,  and  that 
great  statesmen  were  found  who  approved  of  such 
an  exclusion.  When  George  IV.  came  to  the 
throne,  the  feeling  of  Ireland  was  strongly  in  his 


126  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

favour,  because  Irishmen  fully  believed  that  he  had 
come  to  do  justice  to  them  and  to  their  hopes. 
When  George  went  over  to  Ireland,  he  was  received, 
wherever  he  presented  himself,  with  impassioned 
outbursts  of  popular  welcome.  An  obelisk  still 
marks  the  spot,  on  the  shore  of  Dublin  Bay,  where 
George  put  his  foot  for  the  first  time  on  Irish  soil. 
The  village  where  he  landed  was  then  called  Dun- 
leary,  but  the  local  authorities  in  a  transport  of 
gratitude — that  gratitude,  no  doubt,  which  was  once 
humourously  described  as  "  a  lively  expectation  of 
favours  to  come" — declared  that  the  old  name 
should  be  known  no  more,  and  that  the  place  should 
thenceforward  be  called  Kingstown ;  and  Kingstown 
it  is  to  the  present  day. 

George  IV.,  however,  soon  disappointed  all  the 
hopes  which  had  been  formed  by  O'Connell,  by 
Thomas  Moore,  and  by  the  leaders  of  the  Catholics 
all  over  the  country.  At  length  it  became  quite  ap- 
parent that  the  King  had  not  the  least  intention  of 
encouraging  any  proposal  for  the  relief  of  the  Roman 
Catholics;  and  an  agitation  set  in  which  became 
before  long  too  powerful  for  any  combination  of 
official  statesmen  to  resist.  The  Catholic  Associa- 
tions formed  a  body  called  into  existence  for  the 
purpose  of  stirring  up  and  guiding  the  agitation, 
and  Daniel  O'Connell  became  the  recognised  head 
of  the  movement. 

O'Connell  knew  that  many  of  the  leading  intel- 
lects of  England  were  on  the  side  of  Catholic  eman- 
cipation. Canning  was  well  known  to  have  been  in 
its  favour ;  and  indeed  it  was  the  only  Liberal  meas- 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  1 27 

ure  in  domestic  policy  with  which  Canning's  sympa- 
thies entirely  went.  Peel  was  too  great  a  statesman 
to  be  set  down  by  anyone  as  having  a  mind  imperv- 
ious to  the  obvious  justice  and  inevitable  claims  of 
the  policy  of  religious  liberty.  Those  who  have 
studied  the  published  letters  of  Sir  Robert  Peel 
must  have  followed  with  much  interest  the  revela- 
tions they  contain  of  the  gradual  working  of  Peel's 
mind  towards  the  enlightened  policy  which  he 
afterwards  adopted.  There  are  not  many  passages 
in  English  history  which  enable  one  thus  to  see  into 
the  mind  and  heart  of  a  great  statesman,  at  a 
supreme  crisis  in  national  policy;  which  allow  us  to 
observe  how  day  after  day,  and  by  event  after  event, 
a  mind  like  that  of  Peel  is  won  from  all  early  preju- 
dices and  traditions,  and  is  brought  to  recognise  the 
truth  of  a  great  principle  in  political  affairs. 

O'Connell  soon  became  a  commanding  power  in 
Ireland.  Between  him  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  there 
was  not  then,  or  at  any  other  time,  anything  like 
personal  or  political  sympathy ;  but  Peel  could  not 
help  recognising  the  force  of  the  new  and  great 
power  which  was  arising  in  political  life.  O'Con- 
nell was  peculiarly  adapted  by  nature  for  the  part 
he  had  to  play.  He  was  a  born  agitator  and  leader 
of  agitations;  he  was  a  popular  orator  of  the  highest 
order.  Nature  had  given  him  a  commanding  pre- 
sence ;  he  was  a  man  of  colossal  stature  and  colossal 
energy ;  and  he  had  a  voice  which  enraptured  every 
listener.  Long  after  O'Connell's  death,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, who  had  no  personal  or  political  sympathy 
with  the  great  Irish  leader,  wrote  of  Sir  Robert 


128  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

Peel,  that  Peel's  was  the  finest  voice  to  which  the 
House  of  Commons  in  his  time  had  ever  listened, 
"  except,  indeed,  the  thrilling  tones  of  O'Connell." 
The  first  Lord  Lyttonin  his  poem,  "  St.  Stephen's," 
breaks  into  positive  raptures  over  the  power  and  the 
music  of  O'Connell's  voice,  and  over  O'Connell's 
eloquence  in  addressing  a  vast  out-of-door  meeting. 
Even  in  the  House  of  Commons,  which  he  entered 
after  he  had  accomplished  his  greatest  triumph,  and 
where  he  found  an  audience  for  the  most  part  bit- 
terly hostile,  O'Connell  conquered  that  audience, 
and  compelled  those  to  admire  the  orator  who  most 
cordially  disliked  the  political  leader. 

O'Connell  was  for  a  long  time  hated  in  England, 
at  least  by  the  Anti-Reformers  of  England,  more 
bitterly  than  any  other  man  of  his  day.  Some  of 
the  great  London  papers  seemed  to  have  lost  all 
sense  of  justice  and  even  of  decency  when  they 
came  to  criticise  him.  He  had  been  a  foremost  ad- 
vocate at  the  Irish  Bar,  and  was  making  a  positive 
fortune  by  his  practice.  In  order  to  devote  himself 
to  the  Catholic  agitation  he  had  given  up  his  work 
at  the  Law  Courts,  and  reduced  himself  from  the 
position  of  a  man  earning  a  large  annual  income  to 
the  position  of  a  man  earning  no  income  at  all.  Yet 
these  newspapers  denounced  him  and  calumniated 
him  as  if  he  had  been  an  impostor  who  got  up  the 
whole  Catholic  agitation  as  a  means  of  putting 
money  in  his  own  pocket.  The  Irish  people  raised 
a  fund  to  enable  him  to  live,  and  to  enable  him  also 
to  carry  on  the  agitation ;  and  the  leading  London 
journal  forthwith  designated  him,  "  the  big  beggar- 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  1 29 

man. ' '  The  Irish  people  had  before  that  time  raised 
a  national  fund  for  Grattan,  and  no  Englishman 
ever  founded  on  that  fact  any  question  as  to  Grat- 
tan's  unselfishness  and  sincerity.  The  English  Free 
Trade  party,  in  days  nearer  to  our  own,  raised  a  very 
large  fund  to  enable  Richard  Cobden  to  maintain 
himself  while  carrying  on  the  Anti-Corn  Law  move- 
ment ;  and  even  Cobden's  most  bitter  enemies  never 
described  him  as  a  beggar-man. 

O'Connell  soon  raised  himself  into  a  position  of 
something  like  dictatorship  over  the  vast  majority 
of  the  Irish  people.  His  genius  was  peculiarly  Celtic 
— he  had  the  imagination,  the  suffusion  of  the  poetic, 
the  rich  humour,  and  the  fitful  changes  of  expression 
which  belong  to  the  temperament  of  the  Celt.  He 
could  move  his  audiences  to  tears  or  laughter,  to 
passion  or  to  good  humour,  just  as  he  willed.  Then 
he  had  all  the  astuteness  of  the  lawyer,  all  the  inex- 
haustible resources  of  the  born  politician  to  aid  him 
in  carrying  on  the  work  to  which  he  had  devoted 
his  heart  and  soul.  He  soon  entered  into  an  alli- 
ance, more  or  less  avowed,  with  the  leaders  of  the 
Democratic  party  in  England  and  in  Scotland.  His 
sympathies  went  with  every  movement  for  religious 
equality  and  for  political  reform ;  and  we  shall  have 
occasion  to  see,  a  little  later  on,  how  thoroughly  he 
was  in  tone  and  in  harmony  with  the  most  advanced 
of  the  English  Liberals.  The  English  Liberals  soon 
found  that  he  was  a  man  who  had  to  be  reckoned 
with ;  and  they  soon  found,  too,  that  he  was  a  man 
who  could  be  trusted  to  co-operate  faithfully  with 
them  in  the  advocacy  of  every  great  reform.  He 

VOL.  I. — 9 


130  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

had  been  one  of  those  who  cordially  welcomed 
George  IV.  on  the  occasion  of  that  memorable  visit 
to  Ireland,  and  it  was  some  time  before  he  could 
thoroughly  rouse  himself  to  face  the  fact  that  George 
cared  nothing  about  Catholic  emancipation,  and 
just  as  little  about  Ireland. 

A  sudden  chance,  almost  an  accident,  gave  O'Con- 
nell  an  opportunity  of  testing  his  power  in  his  own 
country.  One  of  the  members  of  the  Government 
resigned  his  position  as  head  of  the  Board  of  Trade, 
and  another  man  was  appointed  to  the  office.  The 
newcomer,  Mr.  Vesey  Fitzgerald,  who  represented 
an  Irish  constituency,  had  to  go  back  to  Clare  and 
be  re-elected,  before  he  could  enter  on  the  duties 
of  his  new  position.  O'Connell  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity and  boldly  came  forward  as  a  rival  for  the 
suffrages  of  the  electors  of  Clare,  such  electors  as 
there  were  then  tinder  the  old-fashioned  system  of 
restrictions. 

O'Connell,  as  a  Roman  Catholic,  was  excluded  by 
law  from  taking  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
His  bold  step  in  coming  forward  as  candidate  created 
the  wildest  excitement  all  over  the  country.  Many, 
even  of  those  who  thoroughly  sympathised  with  his 
cause,  were  convinced  that  the  step  he  had  taken 
was  too  daring  an  outrage  upon  existing  law  to  do 
anything  but  harm  to  the  movement  for  Catholic 
emancipation.  From  all  sides,  except  alone  from 
the  side  of  his  ardent  followers,  he  received  warnings ; 
but  the  warnings  were  happily  unheeded.  O'Con- 
nell went  to  the  poll,  and  was  elected  member  for 
Clare  by  an  overwhelming  majority  of  votes.  It 


DANIEL   O  CON  NELL,    M.P. 
From  a  painting  by  Bernard  Mulrenin,  R.  H.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  131 

was  one  thing,  however,  to  be  elected  for  Clare,  and 
quite  another  thing  to  take  his  seat  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  The  oath  which  was  then  administered 
to  all  new  members  who  came  to  take  their  seats 
was  one  which  no  Roman  Catholic  could  possibly 
have  accepted,  and  one  which  was  framed  expressly 
with  the  purpose  of  excluding  Roman  Catholics 
from  any  part  in  the  deliberations  of  Parliament. 
The  oath  was  tendered  to  O'Connell,  and  of  course 
he  could  not  accept  it;  he  stated  his  reasons,  and 
was  ordered  to  withdraw.  He  did  withdraw;  and 
he  left  the  House  knowing  full  well  that  the  time 
could  not  be  far  distant  when  he  and  other  Catho- 
lics, legally  elected  as  he  had  been,  would  find 
a  seat  in  that  House  unchallenged  by  any  pro- 
hibitory test.  O'Connell  went  back  to  Clare,  and 
was  re-elected  without  opposition. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting  study  for  the  reader 
of  the  history  of  those  days  is  the  manner  in 
which  the  development  of  the  whole  controversy 
worked  upon  the  mind  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  As 
everyone  knows,  Peel  had  been  for  long  years  a 
steady  opponent  of  the  Catholic  claims.  He  was 
born  and  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  the  most 
dense  and  rigid  Toryism.  He  was  always  too  en- 
lightened a  man  to  persuade  himself  into  the  belief 
that  the  Catholics  ought  to  be  kept  in  a  position 
of  political  inequality  and  degradation,  merely  be- 
cause he  and  his  friends  did  not  approve  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  religion. 

Peel,  however,  had  succeeded  in  persuading  him- 
self that  to  admit  the  Catholics  to  political  equality 


132  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

would  only  open  the  way  for  them  to  damage  or 
destroy  the  State  Church  in  England  and  in  Ireland. 
Now  as  regarded  the  State  Church  in  Ireland,  Peel 
was  unquestionably  a  man  of  foresight.  The  mo- 
ment the  Catholics  were  admitted  to  full  political 
equality,  the  moment  they  could  send  represent- 
atives to  speak  up  for  their  cause  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  that  moment  the  State  Church  in  Ire- 
land was  foredoomed.  Peel  could  not  see  that  the 
doom  of  the  State  Church  in  Ireland  was  no  reason 
for  the  doom  of  the  State  Church  in  England;  in 
fact,  that  every  reasonable  argument  in  favour  of 
the  English  Establishment  was  an  argument  against 
the  Irish  State  Church.  The  Irish  Church  was  a 
Church  of  a  miserably  small  minority ;  a  Church  of 
which  the  threshold  was  never  crossed,  never  would 
be  crossed,  by  any  of  the  vast  majority  of  the  Irish 
people.  Five-sixths,  at  least,  of  the  Irish  popula- 
tion were  Catholics,  whom  the  whole  system  of  the 
penal  laws  had  utterly  failed  to  compel  to  any  recog- 
nition of  the  Irish  State  Church.  It  would  have 
been  obvious,  therefore,  to  a  man  of  less  foresight 
than  Peel,  that  to  give  the  Catholics  in  Ireland  the 
full  right  of  vote  and  representation  would  be  to 
speak  the  doom  of  the  Irish  Church.  The  doom 
might  be  delayed,  as  it  was  in  fact  delayed  until  our 
own  times;  but  it  was  certain  to  come. 

What  Peel  failed  to  understand  was  that  the  Eng- 
lish Church  system  rested  on  a  totally  different 
basis ;  and  that  it  was  so  far  acknowledged  and  sup- 
ported as  a  Church  by  the  great  majority  of  the 
English  people.  Therefore,  for  many  years,  Peel 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  133 

persuaded  himself  that  he  could  not  in  conscience, 
as  a  Protestant,  yield  to  the  Catholic  claims.  Such, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  the  position  taken  up  by 
George  III.,  and  for  a  time  taken  up  and  stubbornly 
maintained  by  George  IV.  But  then  Peel's  was  a 
very  different  intellect  from  that  of  George  III.  or 
George  IV.  Peel  was  a  thorough  statesman,  and  he 
could  not  shut  his  eyes  to  facts,  or  disguise  from 
himself  the  meaning  of  those  facts,  as  it  showed 
itself  to  all  intelligent  and  enlightened  minds. 

It  began  to  be  gradually  borne  in  upon  him  that 
the  concession  of  the  Catholic  claims  was  inevitable. 
The  Marquis  of  Wellesley,  elder  brother  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  had  been  appointed  Lord-Lieutenant 
of  Ireland,  partly  because  he  was  supposed  to  be 
the  sort  of  man  who  could  make  head  against  the 
Catholic  claims ;  and  the  Marquis  of  Wellesley  had 
not  been  long  in  Dublin  before  he  became  convinced 
that  the  claims  of  the  Catholics  would  have  to  be 
conceded.  He  resigned  his  post  as  Irish  Viceroy 
when  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  on  taking  the  office 
of  Prime  Minister,  announced  that  Catholic  eman- 
cipation was  not  to  be  a  Cabinet  measure.  He  was 
succeeded  in  the  Irish  Viceroyalty  by  the  Marquis 
of  Anglesey,  who  had  been  a  distinguished  soldier 
in  the  wars  against  Napoleon,  and  rendered  brilliant 
services  on  the  field  of  Waterloo.  Lord  Anglesey 
was  known  to  be  opposed  to  Catholic  emancipation, 
and  had  actually  spoken  vehemently  against  that 
and  all  other  Irish  claims  when  he  was  a  Member  of 
Parliament.  But  Lord  Anglesey  had  not  been  long 
in  office  before  he,  too,  recognised  the  absolute 


134  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

necessity  of  conceding  political  equality  to  the  Irish 
Catholics. 

The  question  came  up  in  a  manner  which  com- 
pelled the  Government  to  give  immediate  attention 
to  it.  In  the  vehemence  of  the  popular  commotion 
caused  by  O'Connell  and  the  Catholic  Association, 
an  Act  had  been  passed  for  a  limited  number  of 
years,  for  the  suppression  of  the  Catholic  Association 
and  all  other  unlawful  associations  in  Ireland,  thus 
putting  on  a  show  of  fair  play  by  including  the 
operations  of  Orange  societies  within  its  scope,  but 
really  directed,  and  with  the  knowledge  of  everyone, 
against  O'Connell  and  the  Catholics.  This  Act  was 
shortly  about  to  expire,  and  the  question  was 
whether  it  could  be  renewed,  and  what  was  to  hap- 
pen if  it  were  not  renewed.  Lord  Anglesey  pressed 
these  questions  on  the  notice  of  the  Government, 
announcing  his  conviction  that  the  Catholics  could 
not  much  longer  be  kept  in  subjection  without  civil 
disturbance,  and  declaring  himself  to  be  an  advocate 
of  peace,  not  indeed  at  any  price,  but  certainly  at 
the  price  of  Catholic  emancipation.  All  this  must 
have  profoundly  impressed  the  mind  of  Peel. 

In  the  early  part  of  1828  an  important  resolution 
was  brought  forward  in  the  House  of  Commons  by 
Sir  Francis  Burdett,  then  in  the  front  of  the  reform 
movement,  calling  on  the  House  to  consider  the 
state  of  the  laws  affecting  the  King's  Roman  Catho- 
lic subjects  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  "  with  a 
view  to  such  a  final  and  conciliatory  settlement  as 
may  be  conducive  to  the  peace  and  strength  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  to  the  stability  of  the  Protestant 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  135 

Establishment,  and  to  the  general  satisfaction  and 
concord  of  all  classes  of  his  Majesty's  subjects." 
This  resolution  was  actually  carried  by  two  hundred 
and  seventy-two  votes  against  two  hundred  and 
sixty-six. 

Peel  was  particularly  impressed  by  one  passage  in 
the  speech  of  Brougham  in  support  of  the  resolution. 
Brougham's  observation  was  that  no  single  member 
of  those  who  had  opposed  the  motion  of  Sir  Francis 
Burdett  had  affirmed  the  proposition  that  things 
could  remain  as  they  were,  and  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  conceal  or  deny  the  great  progress  which 
this  question  had  made  in  Parliament  and  the  much 
greater  progress  which  it  had  made  out-of-doors. 
One  can  easily  understand  how  a  statement  like  this, 
the  truth  of  which  could  not  be  challenged  for  a  mo- 
ment, must  have  helped  to  bring  conviction  to  the 
mind  of  Peel.  Of  course  a  mere  fanatic  or  a  mere 
dreamer  would  not  have  been  moved  from  a  previous 
opinion  by  any  such  consideration.  What  would  it 
be  to  him  if  the  majority  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
if  the  majority  of  the  public  out-of-doors,  were  op- 
posed to  his  own  personal  opinions  on  the  subject  ? 
"  So  much  the  worse,"  our  fanatic  or  dreamer  would 
say,  "  for  the  House  of  Commons  and  for  the  pub- 
lic, in  the  end ;  they  will  find  out  that  I  am  in  the 
right  and  that  they  are  in  the  wrong ;  and  they  will 
have  to  put  up  with  the  results  of  their  obstinacy." 

But  of  course  Peel  was  neither  a  fanatic  nor  a 
dreamer;  he  was  above  all  things  a  clear-headed, 
practical  statesman,  and  had  no  inclination  whatever 
to  fight  against  the  stars  in  their  courses,  especially 


136  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

when  he  began  to  have  the  conviction  brought  home 
to  him  that  the  stars  in  their  courses  were  fighting 
on  the  right  side.  Peel  not  merely  counted  but 
weighed  the  votes  in  that  debate.  He  observes  in 
one  of  his  letters  that  "  without  depreciating  the 
abilities  or  authority  of  those  who  concurred  with 
me  in  resisting  the  motion  " — for  it  has  to  be  ob- 
served that  Peel  as  yet  had  not  seen  his  way  to  vote 
for  the  motion — anyone  acquainted  with  the  House 
of  Commons  at  that  time  would  readily  admit  that 
the  great  preponderance  of  talent  and  of  influence 
on  the  future  decisions  of  the  House  of  Commons 
was  ranged  on  the  other  side.  The  Government  at 
all  events  went  so  far,  instructed  by  events,  as  to 
give  up  the  idea  of  asking  Parliament  for  a  renewal 
of  the  Act  against  the  Catholic  Association. 

Of  course,  Peel  followed  closely  the  events  preced- 
ing the  Clare  election  and  the  result  of  the  vote. 
He  knew  that  Vesey  Fitzgerald,  the  defeated  candi- 
date for  Clare,  was  one  of  the  most  popular  men  in 
Ireland.  Fitzgerald  had  represented  Clare  for  many 
years,  and  had  always  supported  by  his  speeches 
and  his  votes  the  claim  of  the  Catholics  for  political 
emancipation.  He  was  a  son  of  the  man  who  fought 
stoutly  against  the  Act  of  Union  by  the  side  of 
Henry  Grattan  and  Sir  John  Parnell.  Certainly  a 
better  man  could  not  have  been  found  to  contest  on 
the  Government  side  the  candidature  of  O'Connell; 
yet  he  was  hopelessly  defeated.  In  fact  a  great  con- 
stitutional crisis  had  arisen,  and  even  Lord  Eldon 
unbent  so  far  as  to  admit  that  the  result  of  the  Clare 
election  must  be  to  bring  the  Catholic  question  to  a 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  137 

conclusion  before  long,  a  conclusion  of  which  he 
highly  disapproved,  as  was  only  natural  for  him,  but 
which  he  felt  that  it  was  not  in  the  power  of  himself 
or  any  other  man  or  set  of  men  to  prevent.  When 
a  man  like  Lord  Eldon  could  thus  far  stifle  his  most 
inveterate  prejudices  and  passions  and  could  see  the 
results  which  were  destined  to  come,  it  is  not  likely 
indeed  that  a  man  of  Peel's  intellect  and  clear- 
sightedness could  close  his  eyes  against  the  lessons 
of  the  crisis. 

In  the  meanwhile  Peel  was  continually  pressed 
by  Lord  Anglesey  to  come  to  some  decision  on  the 
subject.  There  was  a  tremendous  difficulty  in  front, 
and  Anglesey  saw  but  one  way  out  of  it.  What  he 
felt  is  well  expressed  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  in 
order  that  it  might  be  formally  submitted  to  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  and  to  Sir  Robert  Peel.  In 
speaking  of  the  Catholics  he  said:  "  I  believe  their 
success  inevitable,  and  that  no  power  under  heaven 
can  arrest  its  progress.  There  may  be  rebellion, 
you  may  put  to  death  thousands,  you  may  suppress 
it,  but  it  will  only  be  to  put  off  the  day  of  com- 
promise." Lord  Anglesey  over  and  over  again,  in 
reply  to  the  arguments  of  those  who  were  accus- 
tomed to  ask,  as  Lord  Melbourne  later  on  used  to 
ask,  "Can't  you  let  things  stay  as  they  are?" 
points  out  that  so  far  as  the  Catholic  claims  are 
concerned  things  will  not  stay  as  they  are,  that 
no  power  of  horse,  foot,  and  artillery  can  compel 
them  to  stay  as  they  are. 

In  Lord  Anglesey's  opinion  rebellion  was  certain 
to  come  if  the  Catholic  claims  were  thrust  aside,  and 


138  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

he  further  believed  that  if  even  one  rebellion  were 
put  down  another  and  another  would  come  on  till 
Catholic  emancipation  had  been  granted.  At  one 
crisis  of  the  movement  we  find  Peel,  from  his  pub- 
lished correspondence,  asking  himself  the  question 
which  we  record  here  at  full  length  because  of  its 
momentous  nature,  and  because  also  of  the  light  it 
throws  on  the  statesmanlike  and  practical  manner  in 
which  the  mind  of  Peel  grasped  the  whole  situation, 
and  the  kind  of  dramatic  instinct  which  belonged  to 
him,  and  without  which  there  can  be  no  genuine 
statesmanship — the  dramatic  instinct  which  enables 
a  man  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  his  opponents, 
and  to  realise  the  meaning  of  their  cause  as  it  presents 
itself  to  them. 

Peel  asks  himself  "  whether  it  may  not  be  possible 
that  the  fever  of  political  and  religious  excitement 
which  was  quickening  the  pulse  and  fluttering  the 
bosom  of  the  whole  Catholic  population, — which  had 
inspired  the  serf  of  Clare  with  the  resolution  and 
the  energy  of  a  free  man, — which  had  in  the  twink- 
ling of  an  eye  made  all  considerations  of  personal 
gratitude,  ancient  family  connection,  local  prefer- 
ences, the  fear  of  worldly  injury,  the  hope  of 
worldly  advantage  subordinate  to  the  one  absorb- 
ing sense  of  religious  obligation  and  public  duty — 
whether,  I  say,  it  might  not  be  possible  that  the 
contagion  of  that  feverish  excitement  might  spread 
beyond  the  barriers  which  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances the  habits  of  military  obedience  and  the 
strictness  of  military  discipline  oppose  to  all  such 
external  influences  ? " 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  139 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  British  Army  was 
at  that  time,  as  it  is  now,  largely  recruited  from  the 
Irish  Catholic  population ;  and  was  it  absolutely  cer- 
tain that  the  Irish  Catholics  in  uniform  could  be 
relied  upon  at  such  a  crisis  to  shoot  down  their 
fellow-Irishmen  and  fellow-Catholics,  who  were  en- 
gaged in  the  defence  of  the  Irish  and  the  Catholic 
cause  ?  Peel  shook  his  head  over  this  difficulty,  and 
felt  satisfied  that  only  a  man  in  a  fool's  paradise 
could  feel  quite  sure  that  Irishmen  in  the  army 
could  all  be  relied  upon  for  such  a  sacrifice  of  their 
religion  and  their  country.  Peel,  of  course,  was  not 
a  soldier,  but  Lord  Anglesey,  who  was  a  brilliant 
soldier  of  long  experience,  was  even  more  doubtful 
than  Peel  as  to  the  possibility  of  keeping  the  Irish 
Catholic  soldiers  under  the  British  flag  if  an  insur- 
rection, caused  by  the  rejection  of  the  Catholic 
claims,  were  to  break  out  in  Ireland.  At  a  time 
much  later  than  that  of  Peel  we  have  seen  how,  in 
the  war  between  France  and  Austria,  large  numbers 
of  Venetian  soldiers  in  the  Austrian  service  crossed 
over  on  the  very  battle-field  to  the  ranks  of  France 
rather  than  fight  for  those  who  held  them  in  subjec- 
tion, against  those  who  promised  to  set  them  free ; 
and  in  that  case  there  was  no  religious  question  to 
intensify  the  patriotic  fervour  of  theVenetian  soldier. 

When  we  read  the  words  in  which  Peel  speaks  of 
O'Connell's  candidature  for  Clare  as  having  inspired 
the  serf  of  Clare  with  the  resolution  and  the  energy 
of  a  free  man,  we  must  remember,  in  order  to  ap- 
preciate the  firm  composure  of  Peel's  judgment,  that 
it  was  the  fashion  of  nearly  all  Tory  politicians  at 


140  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

the  time  to  treat  O'Connell  and  his  agitation  with 
utter  contempt.  The  theory  even  of  many  enlight- 
ened Englishmen  just  then  was  that  O'Connell  was 
simply  a  self-seeking  and  noisy  impostor  who  had 
succeeded  somehow  in  setting  the  whole  Catholic 
population  in  Ireland  mad. 

This  sort  of  idea  is  indeed  a  favourite  theory 
amongst  men  of  strong  prejudice  and  weak  intellect 
when  any  great  constitutional  crisis  arises  which  is 
distasteful  to  them  and  to  their  friends.  It  had  been 
applied  to  the  French  Revolution  until  the  Revolu- 
tion became  too  strong  to  be  disposed  of  any  longer 
by  the  theory  of  an  insane  population  and  half  a 
dozen  self-seeking  and  crafty  demagogues.  Peel's 
intellect  was  not  one  which  could  be  long  deluded 
by  the  demagogue  and  the  Bedlamite  theory.  What 
was  it,  he  asked  himself,  which  had  inspired  the  serf 
of  Clare  with  the  resolution  and  the  energy  of  a  free 
man  ?  Was  it  not  the  serf's  conviction  that  he  had 
a  great  national  and  religious  cause  to  fight  for,  and, 
if  needs  were,  to  die  for  ?  Peel's  mind  was  gradually 
and  rapidly  coming  round  to  Lord  Anglesey's  view 
of  the  crisis;  and  it  was  not  long  before  he  had 
reached  the  settled  conviction  that  Parliament  must 
grant  Catholic  emancipation.  Here,  again,  we  have 
to  observe  how  different  was  the  character  of  Peel 
from  that  of  other  statesmen  who  had  at  other  times 
anything  like  a  similar  crisis  to  encounter. 

It  has  happened  more  than  once  in  English  history 
since  the  days  of  the  Catholic  question,  that  a  states- 
man having  combated  successfully  a  certain  political 
movement  for  session  after  session  has  at  last  been 


RIGHT    HON.    SIR    ROBERT   PEEL,    BART,    M.I'. 
From  a  painting  by  John  Linnell,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  141 

forced  to  the  conclusion  that  the  movement  was  too 
strong  to  be  resisted  much  longer,  and  that  as  it  was 
destined  to  be  successful  he  might  as  well  have  the 
honour  of  its  success  as  any  other.  There  is  an  in- 
stance in  modern  English  history  of  a  statesman 
who  having  thus  been  forced  to  make  up  his  mind 
to  the  inevitable  success  of  a  movement  which  he 
had  hitherto  opposed  with  all  his  might  and  main, 
came  to  think  that  after  all  he  might  as  well  take 
advantage  of  the  crisis  by  putting  himself  at  the 
head  of  the  movement,  and  carrying  it  to  a  parlia- 
mentary success. 

Peel  never  could  be  a  statesman  of  this  light- 
minded  order;  he  now  felt  convinced  that  Catholic 
emancipation  must  be  carried,  and  his  one  great 
concern  was  in  the  question,  Who  is  the  best  man  to 
carry  it  ?  He  decided  that  for  many  reasons  he 
himself  was  not  that  man.  He  was  strongly  of 
opinion  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  passing 
such  a  measure  through  the  House  of  Commons 
and  through  the  House  of  Lords  would  be  enorm- 
ously increased  if  the  measure  were  to  be  introduced 
by  one  on  whom  the  Tories  of  both  Houses  had  long 
relied  as  the  strongest  bulwark  against  the  Catholic 
agitation.  He  had  many  personal  objections  to  the 
undertaking  of  a  task  which  would  of  necessity  com- 
pel him  to  enter  into  negotiations  with  the  Catholic 
leaders  and  to  discuss  possible  compromises;  but 
these  personal  objections  would  have  counted  for 
little  with  him  if  he  could  persuade  himself  that  he 
was  the  most  suitable  person  to  conduct  such  nego- 
tiations, and  to  consider  suggested  compromises. 


142  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

He  took  it  for  granted  that  he  must,  during  his  long 
career  as  a  Tory  statesman,  have  aroused  a  hostile 
feeling  against  himself  in  the  minds  of  the  Irish 
Catholic  leaders,  and  he  firmly  believed  that  a 
measure  brought  in  by  some  Minister  more  popular 
in  Ireland  would  be  welcomed  with  more  grateful- 
ness and  more  cordiality  by  O'Connell  and  his 
associates  in  the  Catholic  movement. 

Peel's  intention  was,  therefore,  to  resign  his  office, 
and  leave  some  statesman  who  might  be  considered 
better  fitted  for  the  task  to  bring  in  the  measure  for 
Catholic  emancipation.  Peel's  own  idea  was  that 
Earl  Grey,  who  had  always  been  an  advocate  of 
civil  and  religious  liberty,  would  be  the  best  man 
whom  the  King  could  invite  to  form  a  Government 
and  to  deal  with  the  Catholic  claims.  But  before 
this  stage  of  the  arrangements  could  be  reached 
Peel  had  to  gain  over  the  Duke  of  Wellington  to 
his  side  and  persuade  the  Duke  to  conquer  the 
King's  opposition.  It  was  difficult  enough  to  per- 
suade the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  had  so  lately 
announced  that  nothing  was  to  be  done  for  the 
Catholic  claims;  but  Peel  succeeded  in  bringing 
Wellington  to  listen  to  reason.  The  difficulty  he 
had  was  all  the  greater  because  Lord  Anglesey  had 
lately  been  dismissed  from  his  office  as  Lord-Lieu- 
tenant of  Ireland,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  shown 
a  want  of  discretion  in  talking  too  freely  in  Ireland 
about  differences  in  the  Cabinet  on  the  subject  of 
the  Catholic  claims. 

We  may  safely  assume  that  Lord  Anglesey  was 
dismissed  from  office  because  the  King  could  not 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  143 

put  up  any  longer  with  his  strenuous  recommenda- 
tions that  those  claims  should  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration. In  any  case,  Lord  Anglesey's  dismissal 
must  have  seemed  to  Peel  to  make  the  task  of 
winning  over  the  Duke  of  Wellington  much  more 
difficult.  But  the  Duke  was  won  over  before  long. 
The  truth  was  that  the  Duke  had  an  absolute  faith 
in  Peel's  judgment  and  statesmanship,  and  when  Peel 
made  up  his  mind  the  Duke  felt  himself  bound  to 
make  up  his  mind  in  the  same  way.  The  Duke's  posi- 
tion then  and  on  other  occasions  was  perfectly  simple. 
If  he  had  been  commanding  an  army  in  a  foreign 
and  a  difficult  country,  he  would  have  accepted  the 
services  of  a  guide  who  knew  the  place,  and  would 
have  followed  the  teachings  of  the  guide  when  in 
order  to  reach  a  certain  spot  he  was  advised  to  go 
this  way  rather  than  that.  In  the  same  spirit  he 
accepted  the  guidance  of  Peel.  "  Peel,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "  knows  all  about  this  political  question;  I 
do  not,  and  I  am  quite  certain  that  the  King  does 
not ;  therefore  I  am  bound  to  follow  Peel's  guidance 
and  to  do  all  that  I  can  to  get  the  King  to  follow  it 
as  well."  One  thing  the  Duke  certainly  did  know 
all  about,  and  was  satisfied  that  he  did  know  all 
about  it :  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  he  could  not 
possibly  get  on  without  Peel,  and  therefore  he  im- 
plored and  he  insisted  that  Peel  must  give  up  all 
idea  of  resigning  his  office,  and  must  not  leave  him, 
the  Duke,  all  alone  to  face  in  bewilderment  the 
difficulties  of  the  crisis.  He  made  it  a  question  of 
old  comradeship,  and  put  it  to  Peel  not  to  desert 
his  comrade  at  a  moment  of  such  peril.  Thus  ad- 


144  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

jured,  Peel  could  not  possibly  press  his  resolve,  and 
he  therefore  consented  to  stand  by  the  Duke  so  long 
as  the  Duke  would  stand  by  him. 

The  difficulty  at  all  events  was  over.  Indeed  it 
became  apparent  that  the  idea  of  prevailing  on  the 
King  to  invoke  the  services  of  Lord  Grey  was  abso- 
lutely out  of  the  question.  The  King  detested  Lord 
Grey.  George  IV.  had  been  accustomed  to  Minis- 
ters and  to  followers  who  yielded  to  him  and  flat- 
tered him  and  nourished  his  self-love  and  his  absurd 
pride  in  his  own  judgment.  Lord  Grey  was  a  cold, 
stern,  unbending  man,  who  acted  only  on  the  dictates 
of  his  reason  and  his  conscience,  and  into  whose 
mind  it  never  entered  that  he  was  bound  to  cajole 
his  Sovereign  by  any  sort  of  flattery  or  semblance 
of  intellectual  deference.  Indeed  it  was  strongly 
believed  by  many  at  the  time  that  one  of  the  King's 
chief  objections  to  Catholic  emancipation  was  found 
in  the  fact  that  Grey  was  in  favour  of  the  principle, 
and  that  Grey  had  again  and  again  proved  unyield- 
ing on  questions  of  policy.  George  believed  that 
the  judgment  of  the  Sovereign  was  entitled  to  exact, 
implicit  obedience  from  any  Minister.  Therefore 
Peel  consented  to  hold  his  place  in  the  Duke  of 
Wellington's  Ministry,  and  the  Duke  agreed  to  ap- 
proach the  King  and  endeavour  to  make  him  listen 
to  reason. 

The  Duke  soon  found  that  the  task  was  even 
more  difficult  than  he  had  supposed  it  to  be.  George 
III.  had  resisted  Pitt,  but,  to  do  him  justice,  out  of 
conscientious  motives,  however  perverted  the  prin- 
ciple of  conscience  might  have  been,  simply  because 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  145 

he  believed  that  it  was  an  offence  against  the  religion 
of  the  State  for  an  English  Sovereign  to  allow  re- 
ligious equality  to  those  who  professed  the  faith  of 
Rome.  If  George  III.  could  have  been  persuaded 
by  the  tongues  of  men  or  of  angels  that  to  approve 
of  Catholic  emancipation  would  not  have  been  to 
break  his  Coronation  Oath,  he  might  have  consented 
to  the  policy  of  Pitt  and  of  Canning.  But  with 
George  IV.  there  were  mixed  motives.  He  pro- 
fessed to  feel  the  conscientious  objection,  but  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  he  felt  still  more  strongly  the 
blow  to  his  foolish  self-conceit  and  his  absurd  idea 
of  his  own  personal  dignity  which  would  have  to  be 
borne  if  he  were  to  consent  to  give  way  to  anyone 
on  such  a  question. 

George  had  lately  said,  on  more  than  one  occa- 
sion, that  if  his  subjects  did  not  like  a  Protestant 
king  they  could  find  a  Catholic  king  in  the  Duke  of 
Clarence,  whom,  for  some  reason  or  other,  George 
chose  to  regard  as  a  devoted  advocate  of  the  Catho- 
lic claims.  George  met  the  Duke  of  Wellington  in 
the  same  spirit,  and  after  many  ineffectual  disputa- 
tions Wellington  and  Peel  were  forced  to  the  con- 
clusion that  it  would  be  impossible  to  obtain  the 
King's  consent,  point-blank,  to  any  measure  of 
Catholic  emancipation.  They  therefore  devised  a 
little  plan  by  which  to  get  round  their  obstinate 
Sovereign.  They  obtained  leave  to  draw  up  and 
submit  to  the  King  for  his  consideration  a  memor- 
andum containing  their  views  of  a  policy  to  be 
adopted  with  regard  to  the  consideration  of  the 
whole  Irish  question,  without  any  special  reference 


146  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

to  Catholic  emancipation.  This  scheme  did  indeed 
include  Catholic  emancipation,  but  that  was  only 
one  subject  among  others,  and  it  was  fondly  hoped 
that  the  King  might  be  thus  cajoled  into  allowing 
the  whole  scheme  to  pass  without  objection,  seeing 
that  it  no  longer  rested  on  Catholic  emancipation 
alone.  The  King  yielded  so  far  as  to  consent  to 
have  the  scheme  submitted  to  him,  but  distinctly 
declared  that  he  would  not  pledge  himself  to  give  it 
a  favourable  consideration. 

Time  was  pressing ;  Peel  had  already  given  formal 
notice  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  on  a  certain 
day  near  at  hand  he  would  call  attention  to  the 
whole  subject  of  the  disabilities  imposed  on  Roman 
Catholics.  On  the  day  just  before  that  which  Peel 
had  appointed  for  his  statement  in  the  House,  he 
was  summoned,  with  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and 
the  Lord  Chancellor,  to  attend  the  Sovereign.  Then 
the  King  bluntly  declared  that  he  would  not  tolerate 
any  alteration  in  the  Oath  of  Supremacy.  There 
was  a  long  argument  on  the  subject.  The  Duke 
and  Peel  and  the  Lord  Chancellor,  Lord  Lyndhurst, 
endeavoured  to  get  the  King  to  understand  that 
without  some  alteration  in  the  Oath  of  Supremacy 
it  would  be  perfectly  impossible  to  do  anything  for 
the  Catholics,  because  the  Oath  of  Supremacy  as 
then  framed  was  one  that  no  Catholic  elected  to  the 
House  of  Commons  could  possibly  consent  to  take. 

The  King  was  not  moved  by  the  argument,  prob- 
ably he  did  not  listen  to  much  of  it,  very  likely  was 
thinking  of  something  else  for  most  of  the  time,  and 
he  could  only  go  back  to  his  former  declaration,  that 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  147 

he  would  not  allow  the  slightest  alteration  in  the 
Oath  of  Supremacy,  and  would,  therefore,  refuse 
his  consent  to  the  whole  scheme  which  the  memor- 
andum had  set  forth.  The  Ministers  took  the  an- 
nouncement with  composure,  but  firmly  maintained 
their  advice.  Then  the  King  blandly  asked  them 
what  course  they  proposed  to  take ;  the  three  Min- 
isters answered  that  they  proposed  to  ask  his  Majesty 
for  permission  to  announce  to  the  House  of  Lords 
and  to  the  House  of  Commons  that  they  had  ceased 
to  hold  office,  and  were  no  longer  responsible  for 
the  policy  of  the  country.  George  did  not  seem  to 
have  expected  quite  so  prompt  and  decisive  a  reply ; 
but  he  retained  his  outward  composure, — it  must  be 
remembered  that  he  was  in  his  own  estimation  and 
by  his  own  professions  the  first  gentleman  in  Europe, 
— and  he  graciously  said  that  he  supposed  he  had  no 
right  to  blame  them  for  the  course  they  felt  bound 
to  take.  He  carried  his  graciousness  still  further, 
for,  in  the  words  of  one  of  the  Ministers,  "  the  King 
took  leave  of  us  with  great  composure  and  great 
kindness,  gave  to  each  of  us  a  salute  on  each  cheek, 
and  accepted  our  resignation  of  office."  Satire 
itself  could  hardly  burlesque  that  scene.  Thackeray 
has  made  delicious  fun  of  it  in  one  of  his  lectures. 
Fancy  the  worn-out  old  Royal  rake  pressing  a  kiss 
on  each  cheek  of  the  Duke  and  the  Lord  Chancellor 
and  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  dismissing  them  as  it  were 
with  his  paternal  blessing ! 

As  soon  as  the  dismissed  Ministers  had  gone,  the 
King  found  that  the  difficulties  of  the  crisis  had  only 
begun  for  him.  It  was  absolutely  impossible  for 


148  RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES 

him  to  get  any  responsible  statesman  to  form  a 
Ministry.  He  was  at  all  events  relieved  of  all 
trouble  so  far  as  Lord  Grey  was  concerned,  for  even 
if  he  could  so  far  have  controlled  his  personal  feel- 
ings as  to  overcome  his  dislike  to  Lord  Grey,  it 
would  be  utterly  out  of  the  question  to  think  of  in- 
viting Lord  Grey  to  form  a  Government  which  was 
not  to  admit  the  claims  of  the  Catholics.  Even 
George  IV.  with  all  his  self-conceit  and  all  his  lack 
of  sense  could  not  think  of  facing  the  country  with 
the  announcement  that  he  had  no  longer  any  Minis- 
ters, and  that  he  proposed  to  govern  the  country  by 
despotic  right.  Even  George  knew  that  things  had 
not  yet  come  to  such  a  pass  with  the  people  of  Eng- 
land that  they  would  stand  an  announcement  of  that 
kind.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  give  in,  and 
the  King  gave  in.  He  wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Well- 
ington telling  him  of  his  submission,  and  asking  the 
Duke  to  urge  Peel  and  Peel's  colleagues  to  remain 
in  office  and  bring  in  their  scheme  of  Irish  policy. 
The  Constitution  had  conquered  and  the  Sovereign 
was  down. 

Peel  brought  in  his  measure  of  Catholic  emancipa- 
tion and  it  was  carried  through  both  Houses  of  Par- 
liament without  much  of  a  struggle.  The  Clare 
election  had  in  fact  proved  a  peaceful  revolution. 
It  has  to  be  added  that  the  measure  when  carried 
into  law  proved  to  be  stinting  and  ungenerous  in  its 
concessions.  It  was  constructed,  to  a  large  extent, 
on  that  principle  of  "  checks  and  balances  "  about 
which  so  much  was  heard  at  a  later  period  of  Eng- 
lish political  life.  The  "  checks  and  balances  "  idea 


J.  M.  W.  TURNER. 
From  a  painting  by  P.  Kramer. 


RELIGIOUS  DISABILITIES  149 

was  to  take  away  a  good  deal  with  one  hand,  while 
giving  something  considerable  with  the  other.  The 
bill  abolished  some  old  existing  franchises  in  Ireland 
which,  in  the  coming  condition  of  things,  might  have 
proved  too  favourable  to  the  Irish  Catholics.  The 
object  to  be  gained  was  no  doubt  to  put  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  any  triumph  for  the  Catholics  like  that 
of  the  Clare  election  at  any  future  day. 

Peel,  we  may  be  sure,  would  have  made  the  meas- 
ure more  simple  and  complete  if  he  had  had  his  way ; 
but  he  had  to  take  into  consideration  the  Tories 
and  the  House  of  Lords,  and  he  did  not  think  it 
wise  to  venture  upon  anything  which  might  seem 
like  an  absolute  surrender,  even  to  the  claims  of 
justice,  when  those  claims  were  put  forward  by  Irish 
Roman  Catholics.  O'Connell  in  especial  was  un- 
generously dealt  with.  After  the  passing  of  the 
Act  he  had  to  go  back  to  Clare  and  to  be  elected  all 
over  again,  just  as  if  his  previous  elections  had  not 
been  the  moving  occasion  of  the  whole  political 
crisis.  Of  course  O'Connell  had  no  trouble  in  get- 
ting re-elected ;  but  there  was  something  lamentable 
in  the  policy  which  only  allowed  him  to  come  into 
Parliament  when  it  was  no  longer  humanly  possible 
to  keep  him  out.  O'Connell  took  his  seat  in  the 
House  of  Commons  unchallenged,  and  with  his  en- 
trance into  Parliament  a  new  chapter  in  history 
opened. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

COMING  REFORM   CASTS   ITS   SHADOW   BEFORE 

THE  first  impulse  to  the  reform  cause  in  England 
was  undoubtedly  given  by  the  great  French 
Revolution.  Another  impulse  in  the  same  way 
was  given  during  the  closing  years  of  George  IV. 
by  a  much  smaller,  swifter,  and  less  blood-stained 
revolution — the  revolution  which  overthrew  Charles 
X.,  the  last  Legitimist  Sovereign  of  France  that 
modern  times  have  seen  or  are  likely  to  see.  Charles 
X.  succeeded  Louis  XVIII.,  who  had  been  reseated 
on  the  French  throne  by  the  armies  of  England, 
Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia,  and  who  represented 
the  elder  branch  of  the  Bourbon  family. 

It  was  well  said — the  words,  indeed,  have  passed 
into  a  proverb — that  the  Bourbons  learnt  nothing 
and  forgot  nothing.  Charles  X.  had  learnt  nothing 
from  all  the  evidences  of  the  growth  of  popular  sen- 
timent, and  forgotten  nothing  of  the  ancestral  claims 
of  the  Bourbons.  He  and  his  Ministers,  among 
whom  the  most  influential  was  the  Prince  de  Poli- 
gnac,  found  themselves  confronted  by  a  great  crisis 
in  France,  and  they  set  to  work  to  deal  with  it  after 
the  characteristic  Bourbonian  fashion.  De  Polignac 

150 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     I  5  I 

was  a  man  of  great  ability,  of  inexorable  stubborn- 
ness, into  whose  mind  it  was  impossible  for  any  ray 
of  a  new  political  idea  to  enter.  The  King  and  he 
alike  took  alarm  at  the  freedom,  to  them  intoler- 
able, which  the  newspapers  of  France  and  especially 
of  Paris  began  to  exhibit  in  their  criticisms  of  Min- 
isters and  of  Ministerial  policy.  There  was  nothing 
in  the  writings  of  the  French  Press  which  could 
seem  surprising  to  an  experienced  English  states- 
man, or  which,  indeed,  such  a  statesman  would  not 
have  taken  for  granted.  But  to  Polignac  and  Po- 
lignac's  master  it  seemed  unbearable  that  the  news- 
paper writers  should  arrogate  to  themselves  the 
right  of  objecting  to  the  policy  of  Ministers,  the 
right  of  ridiculing  it  and  denouncing  it  and  holding 
it  up  to  public  scorn  and  anger. 

The  King  and  his  Ministers  had  for  a  while  con- 
trived to  get  the  assent  of  the  two  Chambers — the 
Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives — to  sanc- 
tion their  narrow  and  reactionary  policy.  But  it 
might  have  been  plain  to  any  intelligent  mind  that 
the  feeling  of  the  country  was  rising  against  the 
conduct  of  the  majority  in  both  Houses,  and  that  a 
general  election  would  send  a  very  different  major- 
ity into  the  Representative  Chamber.  The  French 
people  were  then,  as  they  are  now,  a  newspaper- 
reading  people ;  every  journal  published  in  Paris  was 
eagerly  read,  except,  indeed,  the  one  or  two  official 
papers  which  merely  registered  the  views  of  the 
King  and  his  Ministers  and  admonished  the  people 
to  be  taught  by  them.  The  people  as  a  whole  re- 
sponded to  the  admonition  by  declining  to  read  the 


152     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

Ministerial  journals.  There  was  a  further  cause  of 
hostile  feeling  to  the  King's  Ministers  found  in  the 
fact  that  they  were  supposed  to  be  in  secret  alliance 
with  the  King  of  England  and  his  great  Minister, 
the  Duke  of  Wellington. 

The  very  name  of  Wellington  was  at  that  time  a 
sound  of  horror  in  the  ears  of  the  French  public. 
It  was  much  too  soon  to  forget  that  he  had  been  the 
leading  instrument  in  the  policy  which  crushed  the 
great  Revolution,  so  far  as  that  Revolution  was  re- 
presented by  Napoleon,  and  put  back  the  heir  of  the 
Bourbons  on  the  throne  of  France.  Now  there  is 
not  the  least  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  encouraged,  or  would  have  encouraged, 
the  King  of  France  and  his  admirers  in  the  repress- 
ive measures  which  they  intended  to  adopt.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  as  an  English  statesman  had 
always  shown  himself  obstinate  enough  in  opposing 
every  reform,  but  he  proved  through  his  whole 
career  in  office  that  he  knew  when  a  popular  move- 
ment could  no  longer  be  resisted  without  bloodshed, 
and  that  he  knew,  in  fact,  when  to  give  way.  But 
the  French  public  only  saw  in  him  the  man  who  had 
compelled  France  to  take  back  her  Bourbon  Sover- 
eigns, and  his  supposed  friendship  with  Polignac 
was  a  new  crime  of  Polignac's  in  the  eyes  of  the 
great  majority  of  Frenchmen. 

The  King  and  his  Ministers  at  last  made  up  their 
minds  to  coerce  the  French  Press  into  silence.  The 
Government  issued  a  series  of  ordinances  which,  if 
they  could  have  been  carried  out,  would  have  actu- 
ally extinguished  the  liberty  of  the  Press  in  France. 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     153 

One  of  the  ordinances  was  that  no  newspaper  should 
be  offered  for  sale,  or  be  allowed  in  any  portion  to 
leave  the  place  in  which  it  was  printed,  until  five 
complete  days  had  elapsed  from  the  period  of  its 
preparation,  and  during  the  five  days  each  journal 
was  to  be  submitted  to  a  Government  censorship, 
and  was  not  to  be  offered  to  the  public  until  every 
omission  and  alteration  had  been  made  which  the 
censor  thought  necessary  to  the  dignity  of  the  Crown. 
The  penalties  for  disobedience  were  to  be  found  in 
heavy  fines  and  in  confiscation  of  the  whole  edition. 
A  heavy  fine  was  ordained  for  any  comment  on  the 
private  life  of  any  living  Frenchman  without  the  ex- 
press permission  of  the  person  to  whom  the  criticism 
referred,  and  if  that  particular  person  happened  to 
be  too  indifferent  or  too  magnanimous  to  make  any 
quarrel  about  the  matter,  it  was  provided  that  the 
public  prosecutor  should  take  up  the  case  whether 
the  aggrieved  person  liked  it  or  not. 

The  most  intense  excitement  broke  out  all  over 
France.  The  purpose  of  the  new  policy  was  at  once 
understood  everywhere.  The  Courts  of  Law,  which 
had  judges  faithful  to  the  honourable  traditions  of 
the  Bench,  declined  to  pass  sentences  on  journalists 
who  had  refused  to  regard  the  ordinances  of  the 
King,  and  declared  that  the  ordinances  themselves 
were  a  breach  of  the  Constitution.  The  King  lost 
his  head  under  these  conditions,  and  showed  his 
temper  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  the  judges  who 
had  preferred  the  Constitution  and  the  law  to  the 
favour  of  the  Sovereign.  When  the  King  appeared 
in  public  he  was  received  in  absolute  silence.  There 


1 54     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

was  a  certain  amount  of  rioting  here  and  there  in 
Paris  and  in  the  provinces,  but  nothing  to  alarm  a 
stubborn  Minister;  and  the  King  firmly  believed 
that  like  Macbeth  he  could  make  his  will  avouch 
any  course  of  action  he  thought  fit  to  adopt.  But 
even  the  King  must  have  been  profoundly  impressed 
by  the  conspiracy  of  silence  which  seemed  to  sur- 
round him  whenever  he  made  his  appearance  in 
public.  Furthermore,  there  were  close  observers  in 
the  higher  ranks  of  the  army  itself  who  began  to  be 
more  and  more  convinced  from  day  to  day  that  the 
troops  could  not  be  relied  upon  to  act  against  the 
citizens  of  Paris. 

The  King  still  complacently  hoped  for  the  best, 
according  to  his  interpretation  of  the  word.  There 
had  been  an  expedition  to  Algiers  in  consequence 
of  a  quarrel  between  the  French  Government  and 
the  Dey  of  Algiers,  and  the  latest  military  exploit 
of  the  Bourbons  had  been  the  conquest  of  the  terri- 
tory which  we  now  know  as  Algeria.  The  King 
was  possessed  by  the  hope  that  the  glory  of  this 
conquest  would  be  enough  to  turn  away  public  con- 
tention from  any  minor  questions  at  home,  such  as 
that  of  liberty  of  the  Press,  and  the  right  of  public 
speech ;  but  the  conquest  of  Algiers  was  not  quite 
like  one  of  Napoleon's  victories,  and  the  public  of 
France  kept  on  clamouring  for  reform  without  seem- 
ing to  concern  themselves  about  the  new  annexation 
of  territory. 

Then  again,  to  make  matters  worse  for  the  King, 
there  had  been  a  bad  winter  and  spring,  the  supplies 
of  food  were  stinted,  and  the  mere  throwing  out  of 


JOHN    CONSTABLE,    R.  A. 
From  a  drawing  by  himself,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     1 5 5 

employment  of  the  vast  number  of  workers  who  de- 
pended on  the  printing-offices  for  their  wages  was 
of  itself  enough  to  strengthen  and  embitter  the  pop- 
ular discontent.  The  troops  themselves  were  but 
ill  provided  for,  and  soldiers  called  out  for  special 
duty  were  sometimes  left  with  hardly  anything  to 
eat  or  drink.  Yet  the  King  and  his  Ministers  went 
their  way  as  if  the  road  lay  smooth  before  them. 
There  were  prosecutions  after  prosecutions,  which 
only  made  matters  worse,  and  the  King  had  now  the 
majority  of  the  Representative  Chamber  against 
him.  He  endeavoured  to  strengthen  himself  in  the 
Senate  by  creating  a  large  number  of  new  peers; 
but  the  struggle  had  gone  too  far  to  be  seriously 
affected  by  any  such  measure,  and  the  new  peers 
had  little  inclination  to  set  themselves  against  the 
whole  public  of  France.  The  King  had  now  the 
best  of  the  judges  against  him — it  is  to  the  honour 
of  the  Bench  of  Justice  in  almost  every  country 
that  it  has  so  often  stood  out  against  the  despotic 
decrees  of  a  sovereign  who  chose  to  set  aside  the 
Constitution. 

The  King  went  on  from  bad  to  worse;  he  dis- 
solved the  Chamber  of  Deputies  on  the  ground  that 
during  the  recent  elections  means  had  been  used  in 
various  parts  of  the  country  to  deceive  the  electors 
and  prevail  on  them  to  disregard  the  wishes  of  the 
Sovereign.  He  went  so  far  as  even  to  set  aside  the 
provisions  of  the  charter  itself,  to  reduce  the  num- 
ber of  deputies  in  the  Representative  Chamber,  and 
to  alter  their  qualifications  and  the  methods  by 
which  they  were  elected.  Sometimes,  indeed,  he 


1 56     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

seemed  to  waver  in  his  purpose,  and  to  be  willing  to 
come  to  terms  with  the  people ;  but  whenever  he  did 
thus  waver  he  wavered  at  the  wrong  time,  and  found 
that  it  was  too  late,  and  then  fell  back  on  his  rigid 
original  determination.  The  officer  in  command  of 
the  troops  at  that  time  was  Marshal  Marmont,  one 
of  Napoleon's  old  generals,  who  had  taken  service 
under  the  King  after  Napoleon's  fall,  and  had  done 
his  duty  loyally,  but  who  had  little  heart  for  the 
sort  of  work  that  now  seemed  to  be  set  before  him. 
In  Paris  the  Republican  tricolour  was  flying  every- 
where ;  the  people  had  begun  to  erect  barricades  in 
the  streets.  Miss  Martineau,  in  her  History  of 'the 
Peace,  says  that  in  relation  to  these  events  there  first 
appeared  in  the  London  Annual  Register  the  words, 
then  new  in  such  sense  to  the  British  public,  "  bar- 
ricade "  and  "  omnibus."  Marshal  Marmont  sent 
to  St.  Cloud,  where  the  King  was  staying,  an  aide- 
de-camp  with  a  letter  describing  all  that  was  going 
on  in  the  capital.  The  messenger  delivered  the 
letter  to  the  King  himself,  urging  that  an  instant 
reply  should  be  given ;  and  then  followed  a  memor- 
able question  and  answer.  "  Is  it  a  revolt  ?  "  asked 
the  King.  "  No,  sire,"  was  the  answer,  "  it  is  not 
a  revolt — it  is  a  revolution."  Then  the  King  in  de- 
spair offered  to  abdicate  the  Crown  in  favour  of  his 
grandson,  the  child  of  the  Due  de  Berri,  who,  he 
believed,  would  have  a  better  chance  than  the 
King's  own  son.  But  the  time  had  gone  too  far  for 
any  such  arrangement  as  that.  There  had  been 
fighting  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  the  fact  that  the 
revolution  was  not  more  deeply  soaked  in  blood — 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     I  5  7 

the  numbers  killed  on  both  sides  being  somewhere 
about  a  thousand,  and  the  wounded  in  proportion — 
was  due  only  to  the  conduct  of  most  of  the  troops, 
who  positively  refused  to  fire  on  the  people,  or  to 
take  any  part  in  the  suppression  of  the  popular 
movement.  In  fact,  the  revolution  was  accom- 
plished. 

The  King  and  his  family  escaped  and  found  a  re- 
fuge in  England.  Prince  Polignac  and  others  of  the 
Ministry  were  arrested,  tried,  and  sentenced  to  life- 
long terms  of  imprisonment.  The  son  of  Philippe 
Egalit6  was  proclaimed  King,  not  of  France,  but  of 
the  French ;  and  mounted  the  throne  as  King  Louis 
Philippe,  whom  Carlyle  afterwards  described  as 
"  struggling  under  sad  circumstances  to  be  called 
King  of  the  French  for  a  season,"  and  it  should  be 
added  in  justice  to  Carlyle's  power  of  prophetic 
vision  that  he  used  the  words  long  before  Louis 
Philippe's  reign  seemed  likely  to  come  to  an  abrupt 
end.  Louis  Philippe  was  set  up  as  King  of  the 
Barricades,  and  Charles  X.  had  by  this  time  found 
a  refuge  in  Holyrood  Palace,  Edinburgh,  where  he 
had  been  sheltered  during  his  former  exile  from 
France.  There  was  the  end  of  the  elder  branch  of 
the  Bourbons. 

Before  this  end  had  quite  arrived,  the  career  of 
George  IV.  had  come  to  a  close.  George  had  been 
sinking  in  health  for  some  time,  and  at  last  it  be- 
came evident  to  all  observers  that  his  life  could  not 
long  endure.  His  latest  acts  as  a  Sovereign  had 
been  in  keeping  with  the  policy  of  his  reign  and  of 
his  Regency.  He  set  his  face  rigidly  against  all  re- 


1 5 8     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

forms,  and,  indeed,  unconsciously  did  what  he  could 
to  make  his  death  seem  a  relief  to  the  great  major- 
ity of  his  people.  The  rising  generation  could 
remember  nothing  of  the  hopes  with  which  he  had 
once  inspired  the  public  mind.  They  knew  of  him 
only  as  a  man  cursed  with  indolence  and  dandyism 
and  dissipation.  The  nation  had  grieved,  indeed, 
when  his  only  daughter  died,  because  it  was  felt 
everywhere  that,  should  she  succeed  to  the  Crown, 
the  Empire  would  be  blessed  with  the  rule  of  an 
enlightened,  a  virtuous,  and  a  noble-hearted  Sover- 
eign. But  the  fates  ruled  it  otherwise;  and  per- 
haps in  losing  his  daughter,  George  lost  the  only 
human  being  whom  he  really  loved,  and  who  would 
have  loved  him  if  she  could,  if  his  selfishness,  his 
worthlessness,  and  his  occasional  bursts  of  harshness 
would  have  allowed  her. 

George  IV.  was  succeeded  by  his  brother,  William 
IV.,  Duke  of  Clarence,  who  had  been  trained  for 
the  sea,  and  had  proved  a  most  unmanageable  and 
unruly  officer.  William  IV.  was  accepted  as  King 
with  composure  by  most  of  his  subjects,  and  with  a 
certain  renewed  hopefulness  by  a  few  on  both  sides. 
There  were  those  on  the  Tory  side  who  still  thought 
it  not  impossible  that  the  new  King  might  be  able 
to  hold  his  own  against  the  rising  movement  in 
favour  of  constitutional  reform.  There  were  a  few 
on  the  Liberal  side  who  thought  that  William  IV., 
coming  to  royal  power  for  the  first  time  at  an  ad- 
vanced age,  would  have  acquired  experience  enough 
to  teach  him  that  the  day  had  gone  by  when  a  king 
could  make  himself  an  effective  barrier  against  the 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     1 59 

movement  of  the  times.  The  English  public,  on 
the  whole,  even  including  the  most  advanced  re- 
formers, were  well  inclined  to  give  the  new  King  a 
fair  chance.  Some  of  the  reformers,  indeed,  were 
comforted  by  the  conviction  that  their  movement 
had  now  gone  too  far  to  be  long  delayed  by  any 
influence. 

All  sorts  of  stories  had  long  been  in  circulation 
about  William  IV.,  about  his  unmanageable  char- 
acter as  a  naval  officer,  about  his  fluctuations  in 
opinion,  his  love  affairs,  and  his  occasional  eccentric- 
ity of  conduct ;  but  the  more  philosophical  observers 
consoled  themselves  with  the  thought  that  he  was 
probably  less  obstinate  than  George  III.,  and  was 
certainly  less  immoral  than  George  IV.  He  had,  at 
all  events,  one  great  recommendation  to  the  bulk  of 
his  subjects,  and  that  was  found  in  the  fact  that  he 
was  the  Sailor  King.  Therefore,  it  is  only  fair  to 
say  that  the  new  King  started  with  every  prospect 
of  a  reasonable  chance  to  succeed  in  the  work  of 
government.  But  the  impulse  towards  reform  had 
been  immensely  accelerated  by  the  Three  Days  of 
July,  as  they  were  called,  the  three  days  which  made 
a  second  revolution  in  France.  When  the  news  of 
that  revolution  was  brought  to  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who 
was  then  sitting  in  the  House  of  Commons,  his  com- 
ment on  it  was  that  that  was  just  what  must  come 
of  an  attempt  to  govern  on  too  narrow  a  constitu- 
tional basis.  The  English  people  saw  this  distinctly ; 
they  saw  that  Paris  had  gone  into  revolt  because 
Charles  X.  endeavoured  to  govern  the  country  by 
himself,  and  by  his  Ministers,  without  any  regard 


1 60     COMING  REFORM  CA S TS  ITS  SHA DOW  BEFORE 

for  the  sentiments  and  the  wishes  of  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  his  people.  They  knew  that  he  had  en- 
deavoured to  maintain  his  rule  by  the  suppression  of 
political  criticism  and  the  freedom  of  speech;  they 
knew,  too,  that  one  of  his  offences  in  the  eyes  of 
the  French  people  had  been  his  supposed  defer- 
ence to  the  views  of  George  IV.  and  the  Duke  of 
Wellington. 

The  English  people  looked  at  home,  and  they  saw 
that  in  their  country  also  the  King  had  been  en- 
deavouring to  govern  by  his  own  will,  and  through 
the  action  of  his  favourite  Ministers,  and  they  had 
learned  by  the  proceedings  in  many  Courts  of  Law 
that  the  dearest  wish  of  the  Sovereign  was  to  pre- 
vent all  freedom  of  political  criticism,  whether  in 
speech  or  in  writing,  and  that  the  English  King, 
like  the  French  King,  was  striving  to  maintain  his 
policy  without  the  slightest  regard  for  the  wishes, 
the  feelings,  the  aspirations,  and  the  convictions  of 
the  vast  majority  of  the  people.  It  would  be  im- 
possible that  the  patriotic  intelligence  of  England 
should  not  learn  a  lesson  from  the  overthrow  of 
Charles  X.  There  was  no  desire  whatever  outside 
the  ranks  of  a  few  very  extreme  thinkers  and  de- 
claimers  for  the  establishment  of  a  republican  system 
in  these  countries.  Many  years  later  a  great  Eng- 
lish orator  said  that  among  the  population  of  these 
countries  the  question  of  a  republic  had  not  come 
up.  It  certainly  had  not  come  up,  had  not  even 
dawned,  at  the  time  when  William  IV.  ascended  the 
throne;  but  there  was  at  least  a  hope  that  the  new 
King  might  do  better  than  either  George  III.  or 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADOW  BEFORE     l6l 

George  IV.  had  done ;  and  a  confident  belief  that  in 
any  case  the  reform  movement  could  not  be  long 
delayed.  Therefore  the  change  from  one  sovereign 
to  another  passed  off  quietly,  and  people  in  general 
awaited  the  coming  of  new  events  without  unreason- 
able expectation,  but  also  without  marked  distrust, 
and  certainly  without  any  dismay. 

The  new  Kings  of  England  and  France  seemed 
alike  disposed  to  seek  for  popularity  among  the  hum- 
bler of  their  subjects.  William  IV.  walked  about  the 
London  streets  with  his  umbrella  tucked  under  his 
arm,  and  talked  familiarly  with  everyone  he  knew, 
and  even  when  on  great  State  occasions  he  had  to 
wear  his  royal  robes,  he  wore  his  naval  uniform 
under  them.  Louis  Philippe,  too,  walked  about  the 
streets  of  Paris  just  as  he  thought  fit,  became  identi- 
fied with  his  umbrella,  and  was  known  throughout  his 
reign  as  the  "  Bourgeois  King."  Lord  Eldon  took 
alarm  at  what  he  considered  King  William's  over- 
familiarity  with  people  in  general,  and  laid  it  down 
as  an  axiom  that  a  king,  in  order  to  maintain  his 
throne,  must  show  in  his  ordinary  demeanour  that 
he  considered  himself  the  superior  of  everybody  else 
in  the  world.  When  William  came  to  the  throne 
he  found  the  Duke  of  Wellington  in  office  as  Prime 
Minister,  with  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  Home  Secretary, 
and  he  announced  in  the  most  offhand  and  informal 
way  that  he  had  no  ill-feeling  whatever  towards  his 
good  friend  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  in  whom,  and 
in  Sir  Robert  Peel,  he  placed  the  highest  confidence. 
The  existing  Parliament  would,  of  course,  have  to 
be  dissolved.  It  was  the  rule  then,  and  continued 


VOL.  I.— II 


1 62     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

to  be  so  down  to  a  comparatively  recent  period,  that 
a  dissolution  of  Parliament  must  follow  the  death 
of  a  sovereign. 

The  King  sent  a  formal  message  to  Parliament 
almost  immediately  after  his  accession,  in  which  he 
dwelt,  according  to  the  usual  ceremonial  fashion,  on 
the  loss  the  nation  had  sustained  by  the  death  of  the 
late  Sovereign,  and  then  went  on  to  say  that  the 
sooner  the  new  elections  took  place  the  better.  This 
was  not  exactly  what  the  public  had  expected.  The 
King  was  at  this  time  sixty-five  years  of  age,  and 
was  not  in  particularly  robust  health ;  and  the  heir 
to  the  throne  was  the  Princess  Victoria,  a  child  then 
only  eleven  years  old.  People  asked  themselves 
what  was  to  happen  in  the  meantime,  supposing  the 
King  were  to  die  suddenly,  were  to  meet  with  some 
fatal  accident,  since  no  one  had  been  appointed  re- 
gent, to  carry  on  the  Government  until  the  young 
Princess  should  come  to  the  age  when,  according  to 
constitutional  law,  it  would  be  possible  for  her  to 
perform  the  duties  of  a  queen. 

Parliament  has  to  give  its  consent  to  the  nomina- 
tion of  a  regent,  and  everybody  naturally  expected 
that  the  King  would  make  some  intimation  to  both 
Houses  on  the  subject.  Nothing  about  the  Regency 
was  said  in  the  King's  Message,  and  the  public  dis- 
appointment was  very  wide-spread  and  deeply  felt. 
There  were  gloomy  forebodings  in  many  a  mind. 
One  grim  and  darksome  figure  stood  in  the  shadow 
of  the  throne,  the  figure  of  the  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land, the  King's  eldest  surviving  brother.  It  would 
be  hard  now  to  bring  home  to  the  ordinary  reader 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  I TS  SHA DOW  BEFORE     1 63 

any  adequate  idea  of  the  hatred  which  was  felt  by 
the  mass  of  the  English  people  for  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland.  If  that  Prince  were  guilty  of  half  the 
offences  laid  to  his  charge,  he  would  have  been  bet- 
ter suited  for  a  contemporary  of  the  days  of  Caligula, 
or  of  Caesar  Borgia,  than  for  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Family  of  England  in  1830.  Moreover,  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland  would  at  once  become,  in  the  event 
of  the  King's  death,  the  successor  to  the  Crown  of 
Hanover.  The  Georges  were  all  Kings  of  Great 
Britain  and  of  Hanover,  and  the  Hanoverian  Crown 
descended  in  the  male  line  only.  What  might  not 
happen,  it  was  asked,  if  the  guardianship  of  the 
young  Princess  were  suddenly  to  be  left,  in  the  event 
of  the  King's  death,  to  the  care  of  her  eldest  uncle, 
the  Duke  of  Cumberland  ?  Men  believed  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland  capable  of  anything.  We  shall  see 
later  on  how  there  spread  through  England  a  strong 
conviction  that  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  was  putting 
himself  at  the  head  of  an  organised  conspiracy  to 
alter  the  succession,  and  assume  the  crown  himself. 
This  fear  had  not,  at  that  time,  taken  a  shape  so 
definite,  even  in  the  minds  of  alarmists,  as  it  after- 
wards came  to  bear.  But  even  then  popular  opinion 
was  ready  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  any  dark 
deed  being  sanctioned  by  the  Duke  of  Cumberland. 
Even  those  who  were  not  alarmists,  and  were  not 
disposed  to  exaggerate  the  demerits  of  the  Duke  of 
Cumberland,  kept  asking  what  was  to  happen  if  on 
the  King's  death  he  were  to  betake  himself  to  his 
Kingdom  of  Hanover  and  try  to  organise  conspira- 
cies there.  Everyone  knows  how  hated  in  England 


164     COMING  REFORM  CA  STS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

became  the  very  name  of  Hanover  during  the  reigns 
of  George  I.  and  II.  ;  how  the  people  believed  that 
every  English  interest  was  sacrificed  by  the  Sover- 
eign's love  for  his  Hanoverian  crown,  and  how  jeal- 
ous and  impatient  public  opinion  had  become  in 
these  countries.  There  were,  indeed,  not  a  few 
who  would  have  been  well  contented  if  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland,  on  succeeding  to  the  Hanoverian 
throne,  were  to  go  to  Hanover  and  stay  there,  and 
never  bestow  a  thought  upon  England  any  more. 
This,  however,  was  exactly  what  most  people  be- 
lieved that  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  would  never 
do.  The  common  belief  was  that  he  would  make 
of  Hanover  a  convenient  retreat  for  the  organisation 
of  conspiracy  against  the  child-sovereign  of  England. 
People  looked  forward,  therefore,  with  gloomy  fore- 
bodings to  the  dangers  that  might  be  threatened  if 
the  King  were  to  die,  and  the  Duke  of  Cumberland, 
no  regent  being  named,  were  to  succeed  at  once  to 
the  crown  of  Hanover  and  the  guardianship  of  the 
Princess  Victoria.  The  first  disappointment  which 
King  William  gave  to  his  people  was  by  the  omis- 
sion in  his  Royal  Message  of  any  allusion  to  the 
appointment  of  a  regent. 

On  the  3Oth  of  July,  Lord  Grey  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  and  Lord  Althorp  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, moved  for  the  delay  of  a  day  in  replying  to 
the  Royal  Message.  The  motive  of  the  delay  was 
perfectly  well  understood;  it  was  simply  in  order 
to  give  time  for  the  consideration  of  the  course 
which  ought  to  be  taken  with  regard  to  the  Royal 
Message  if  the  King  should  not  in  the  meantime 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     1 65 

make  any  suggestion  as  to  the  appointment  of  a  re- 
gent. The  Duke  of  Wellington,  on  behalf  of  the 
Government,  refused  to  agree  to  any  proposal  for 
delay,  and  although  several  Tory  peers,  including 
the  indomitable  Lord  Eldon  himself,  voted  in  favour 
of  Lord  Grey's  motion,  the  Ministers  carried  with 
them  a  majority  of  forty-four  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
and  of  forty-six  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

The  debate  in  the  House  of  Commons  deserves 
notice,  if  only  for  the  passion  which  Henry  Brougham 
threw  into  it,  and  the  extraordinary  demeanour  of 
the  House  itself.  Brougham,  of  course,  supported 
the  Liberal  policy  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
his  language  was  certainly  well  calculated  to  pro- 
voke a  scene  in  an  excitable  assembly.  Somebody 
interrupted  Brougham  with  a  peculiar  cry  which 
was  undoubtedly  meant  for  an  imitation  of  the 
utterance  of  one  of  the  lower  animals,  on  which, 
Brougham  observed  that  by  a  wonderful  disposition 
of  Nature  every  animal  had  its  peculiar  mode  of  ex- 
pressing itself,  and  he  was  too  much  of  a  philosopher 
to  quarrel  with  any  of  those  modes.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances, Brougham  may  be  said  to  have  dealt 
good-humouredly  enough  with  the  interruption. 
O'Connell,  at  a  day  a  little  later,  met  with  some 
peculiarly  clamorous  interruptions  from  a  great 
number  of  voices,  whereupon,  in  tones  of  thunder, 
he  called  upon  the  owners  of  the  voices  to  "  silence 
their  beastly  bellowing."  The  Speaker  ruled  that 
O'Connell  was  out  of  order  in  using  the  word 
"  beastly,"  whereupon  O'Connell  blandly  declared 
that  in  deference  to  the  Speaker  he  withdrew  the 


l66    COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

adjective,  but  he  added,  "  I  never  heard  or  read  of 
any  bellowing  which  was  not  beastly." 

Brougham's  speech  on  the  occasion  to  which  we 
are  particularly  referring  was  met  by  many  such  in- 
terruptions, and  in  that  debate,  as  in  most  debates 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  when  passion  is  at  all 
aroused,  men  indulged  themselves  in  any  form  of 
interruption  which  suited  their  tastes  or  their  lungs. 
One  honourable  member,  perhaps,  had  the  gift  of 
imitating  the  bellowing  of  a  bull ;  another  preferred 
to  bleat  like  a  sheep ;  a  third  reproduced  with  full 
artistic  effect  the  noise  of  a  crowing  cock ;  a  fourth 
mewed  like  a  cat ;  and  so  on,  with  imitations  of  the 
whole  animal  kingdom,  among  which  even  the  mel- 
lifluous, and  probably  in  certain  instances  most 
appropriate,  voice  of  the  donkey  sounded  in  the 
ears  of  those  who  cared  to  listen.  Some  of  the  de- 
scriptions given  to  us  by  men  who  were  present 
during  certain  of  these  noisy  scenes  would  seem 
hardly  credible  to  many  who  even  now  think  the 
House  of  Commons  a  rather  uproarious  and  dis- 
orderly assembly.  All  this,  it  should  be  observed, 
took  place  at  a  time  when  Parliament  was  still  un- 
reformed,  when  the  vulgar  herd  had  no  power  to 
vote  for  the  election  of  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  when  one  of  the  great  arguments 
against  reform  was  that  it  would  flood  that  House 
with  uneducated  and  noisy  persons.  Brougham 
certainly,  sometimes,  gave  an  excuse  for  angry  in- 
terruptions. In  the  course  of  his  speech,  to  which 
we  have  been  referring,  he  made  a  vehement  attack 
upon  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  the  other  Ministers  pre- 


COMING  REFORM  CA  S TS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     1 67 

sent.  He  had  been  complaining  of  the  policy  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  he  suddenly  said, 
looking  fixedly  at  Peel:  "  Him  I  accuse  not.  It  is 
you  I  accuse — his  flatterers — his  mean,  fawning 
parasites."  The  House  of  Commons  in  our  day  is 
noisy  enough  sometimes,  and  rude  enough  in  its 
personal  attacks,  but  such  words  as  these  would  be 
impossible  there  now. 

England  lost  about  this  time  a  remarkable  man 
on  a  most  remarkable  occasion.  The  death  of  such 
a  man  must  always  have  a  deep  personal  and  his- 
torical interest;  but  the  occasion  which  indirectly 
led  to  that  death  was  an  event  of  the  highest  im- 
portance to  England  and  to  civilisation.  It  was  the 
opening  of  the  first  railway  of  any  length  completed 
in  this  country.  There  was  a  great  ceremonial  on 
the  1 5th  of  September,  1830,  in  honour  of  the  open- 
ing of  the  line  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  many 
other  men  took  part  in  the  ceremony,  which  was  to 
have  been  followed  by  a  great  public  dinner  at 
Manchester.  Mr.  Huskisson  was  one  of  those  who 
attended.  He  had  been  paying  a  visit  to  his  con- 
stituents in  Liverpool,  and,  although  in  very  feeble 
health,  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  be  present  on 
the  memorable  occasion  of  the  opening  of  this  first 
completed  railway. 

Before  the  train  left  Liverpool,  the  railway  author- 
ities requested  the  company  to  keep  their  places  in 
the  carriages  until  the  train  reached  its  destination, 
and  a  printed  handbill,  setting  forth  the  request,  was 
passed  along  among  the  travellers.  It  seems  almost 


l68     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

unnecessary  to  say  that  the  request  and  caution 
were  of  no  avail.  The  train  stopped  at  a  wayside 
station  a  few  miles  down  the  line,  and  several  of  the 
company  immediately  got  out  and  indulged  their 
curiosity  by  walking  up  and  down  and  inspecting 
the  outside  of  the  carriages.  Unluckily,  a  friend  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  of  Huskisson  was 
seized  with  the  idea  that  this  would  be  a  propitious 
moment  to  bring  the  two  men  together  and  get 
them  to  shake  hands.  The  idea  spread  abroad,  and 
both  the  Duke  and  Huskisson  were  quite  willing  to 
take  this  opportunity  of  renewing  their  former 
friendship.  The  Duke  advanced  along  the  platform 
to  meet  Mr.  Huskisson,  who  was  approaching  him, 
and  held  out  his  hand  in  cordial  greeting.  Before 
Huskisson  had  well  time  to  take  the  proffered  hand, 
some  alarm  was  caused  by  the  reported  approach  of 
a  locomotive,  and  a  cry  was  raised  to  those  who 
were  standing  outside,  admonishing  them  to  get  into 
the  carriages  again.  Huskisson  was  standing  by  the 
open  door  of  one  of  the  carriages,  and  was  not  quick 
in  getting  in,  probably  because  of  his  physical  weak- 
ness. The  open  door  at  which  he  stood  was  struck 
by  the  locomotive,  and  Huskisson  received  injuries 
so  severe  that  he  died  almost  immediately  after  be- 
ing removed  to  a  neighbouring  parsonage. 

The  fatal  event,  of  course,  cast  the  deepest  gloom 
over  the  whole  party;  the  Ministers  were  only  in- 
duced not  to  break  up  the  ceremonial  at  once  by  the 
fear  that  some  terrible  alarm  might  be  spread  over 
Manchester.  This  was  again  a  season  of  alarms, 
and  no  one  could  tell  what  exaggerated  form  be- 


COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE     1 69 

wildered  rumour  might  not  take  if  none  of  the 
members  were  to  arrive  at  the  place  of  their  destina- 
tion. Nothing  seemed  more  probable  than  that  an 
affrighted  tale  might  be  spread  about  the  assassina- 
tion of  the  Ministers  of  the  Crown  in  a  body,  and 
might  lead  to  the  widest  disturbances.  In  any  case 
it  was  earnestly  urged  upon  the  Ministers  that  the 
death  of  Mr.  Huskisson  might  be  set  down  as  one 
of  the  inevitable  consequences  of  venturing  on  a 
railway  journey,  and  that  the  prospects  of  the  whole 
railway  system  might  be  severely  damaged  for  some 
time  to  come.  The  Ministers,  therefore,  went  to 
Manchester,  but  the  public  celebration  of  the  event 
was  put  off.  In  Huskisson  England  lost  one  who 
might  almost  be  called  a  great  statesman.  The 
stranger  who  visits  Liverpool  to-day  will  find  Hus- 
kisson's  name  maintained  in  streets  and  squares 
and  docks  and  public  institutions. 

We  have  said  that  this  particular  time  was  a  sea- 
son of  alarm  once  again.  There  was  great  distress 
and,  of  course,  consequent  discontent  throughout 
many  parts  of  the  country.  The  fierce  passion  for 
destruction  which  had  formerly  broken  out  in  and 
around  the  towns,  and  had  led  to  the  breaking  of 
machinery,  now  showed  itself  in  the  country  places 
and  in  the  destruction  of  corn-ricks  and  farmhouses. 
One  of  the  favourite  arguments  of  Tories  and  Re- 
actionaries when  the  Revolution  of  1830  broke  out 
in  France  was  founded  on  the  actions  of  some  of 
the  agricultural  populations  of  that  country.  A 
sudden  mania  had  set  in  there  for  the  destruction  of 
farmhouses  and  stores  of  corn.  "  What  could  you 


I7O     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADO  W  BEFORE 

do  with  such  a  people,"  it  was  indignantly  asked, 
"  but  to  keep  them  down  by  force,  to  shoot  them 
down,  to  crush  them  by  any  and  every  means  ? 
What  was  the  wrong-doing  of  Charles  X.  but  that 
he  had  been  too  slow  to  use  the  weapons  in  his 
possession  for  the  wholesale  putting  down  of  such 
acts  of  crime  ?  " 

And  now,  behold,  the  very  same  phenomenon 
was  visible  in  many  parts  of  England.  The  passion 
spread  from  county  to  county.  The  cant  name  of 
"  Swing"  was  used  as  typical  of  the  rick-burning 
outlaw;  and  swing,  indeed,  a  great  many  men  did 
for  their  share  or  their  supposed  share  in  the  busi- 
ness. At  that  time  there  was  no  idea  of  putting 
down  violence  but  by  greater  violence.  The  gal- 
lows was  in  full  use  almost  everywhere,  and  even 
boys  were  remorselessly  hanged  for  their  share  or 
their  supposed  share  in  the  doings  of  "  Swing." 
No  one,  of  course,  could  possibly  justify  or  excuse 
this  rage  for  wanton  destruction.  Such  a  rage, 
however,  is  a  common  outcome  of  popular  and  social 
discontent,  and  when  it  does  break  out  it  ought  to 
be  regarded  as  a  subject  to  be  discussed  as  well  as  a 
crime  to  be  punished. 

As  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  an  impression 
got  abroad  that  many  of  the  acts  of  destruction 
were  prepared  and  instigated  by  paid  emissaries  of 
the  authorities,  who  were  glad  to  commend  them- 
selves to  their  masters  by  promoting  outrages  which 
might  tend  to  cast  discredit  upon  all  popular  move- 
ments in  favour  of  reform.  The  Funds  went  down, 
and  alarmists  began  to  predict  that  if  the  Govern- 


COMING  REFORM  CA S TS  ITS  SffA DOW  BEFORE     1 7 1 

ment  did  not  show  a  firm  front  the  revolution  in 
France  would  be  followed  by  a  revolution  in  Eng- 
land. Even  in  the  minds  of  many  who  did  not 
carry  their  feelings  of  alarm  quite  so  far  as  this,  an 
impression  began  to  prevail  that  a  serious  crisis  was 
again  approaching,  that  the  Sailor  King  or  Patriot 
King  was  already  losing  his  popularity,  and  that  a 
great  division  was  again  taking  place  between  the 
Sovereign  and  his  people.  Some  even  of  the  strong- 
est Tories  began  to  think  that  the  Duke  of  Well- 
ington would  have  to  go  out  of  office  before  long. 
According  to  their  ideas,  he  had  not  been  explicit 
enough  and  decided  enough  in  his  condemnation  of 
the  reform  movement,  and  the  disturbed  state  of 
the  country  was  mainly  owing  to  his  lack  of  firm- 
ness in  dealing  with  the  whole  crisis. 

In  the  meantime  the  new  Parliament  met,  and 
the  King's  Speech  was  made  public.  The  speech 
disappointed  all  popular  expectation.  The  King 
recommended,  indeed,  that  steps  should  be  taken 
to  provide  for  a  Regency  in  case  of  his  death,  but 
otherwise  there  was  nothing  said  which  could  tend 
to  conciliate  the  people.  The  Royal  Speech  ex- 
pressed the  determination  of  the  King  to  maintain 
all  the  treaties  by  which  the  political  systems  of 
the  continent  had  been  forcibly  reconstructed,  con- 
demned with  stern  emphasis  and  frequent  repetition 
the  disturbances  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 
pledged  all  the  powers  of  the  State  to  put  down 
and  properly  punish  such  disturbances,  and,  in- 
directly at  least,  associated  these  disturbances  with 
the  popular  movement  in  favour  of  constitutional 


172     COMING  REFORM  CASTS  ITS  SHADOW  BEFORE 

reform  by  an  inflated  passage  about  the  inestimable 
blessings  of  living  amid  such  political  institutions 
as  those  which  then  existed  in  these  countries.  In 
the  midst  of  all  the  prevailing  commotion  Mr. 
Brougham  gave  notice  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  it  was  his  intention  to  bring  forward  on  a  day 
which  he  named — a  day  then  only  a  fortnight  off 
— the  whole  question  of  parliamentary  reform. 
Brougham  was  then  probably  the  most  popular  man 
in  England,  the  recognised  leader  of  the  reform 
movement. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   GREAT   REFORM   BILL 

ANEW  Parliament  met  on  October  26,  1830. 
The  opening  debate  was  as  usual  on  the  Ad- 
dress in  reply  to  the  Speech  from  the  Throne,  and 
it  proved  to  be  a  debate  of  the  greatest  importance. 
The  Government  were  challenged  by  Lord  Grey  and 
others  to  make  known  their  views  on  the  subject 
of  parliamentary  reform ;  and  the  Government, 
through  the  mouth  of  the  Prime  Minister,  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,  did  make  known  their  views  with  a 
vengeance.  All  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  could 
accord  to  any  proposal  of  parliamentary  reform 
was,  if  we  may  adopt  certain  famous  words  then 
still  ringing  in  the  ears  of  Europe,  "  La  Mort  sans 
phrase. ' ' 

The  Duke  declared  himself  utterly  opposed  to  any 
and  every  measure  which  called  for  an  alteration  in 
the  existing  parliamentary  system.  He  declared 
that  he  had  never  read  or  even  heard  of  any  scheme 
which  satisfied  his  mind  that  the  parliamentary 
system  could  be  rendered  any  better  than  it  was  at 
the  moment.  The  country,  he  declared,  was  happy 
enough  to  possess  a  legislature  which  answered  all 


174  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

the  good  purposes  of  legislation,  and  that  to  a  de- 
gree never  before  known  in  any  other  country.  The 
whole  system  of  representation  and  of  voting  pos- 
sessed, he  insisted,  the  absolute  confidence  of  the 
public.  He  flung  into  the  face  of  Lord  Grey  the 
announcement  that  he  did  not  intend  to  propose 
any  scheme  which  involved  any  alteration  of  the 
Constitution.  But  he  was  not  even  content  with 
that  proclamation ;  he  went  a  little  further  and  an- 
nounced that  so  long  as  he  held  a  position  in  any 
Government  he  should  always  feel  it  his  duty  to 
resist  any  such  proposal  when  brought  forward  by 
others. 

The  delivery  of  such  a  speech  clearly  settled  the 
question  as  to  the  Duke's  possessing  any  faculty  of 
statesmanship,  supposing  such  a  question  possible. 
Almost  anybody  else  in  such  a  position  as  this 
would  have  thought  it  enough  to  say  that  he  him- 
self did  not  believe  the  existing  Constitution  could 
be  improved  upon,  and  that  he  therefore  did  not 
propose  to  bring  forward  any  measure  for  its  im- 
provement. But  it  would  not  be  like  the  Duke  to 
content  himself  with  such  a  reply.  He  felt  himself 
bound  to  go  much  further,  and  to  declare  that  it 
was  absolutely  beyond  the  wit  of  man  to  devise  or 
suggest  any  possible  improvement,  and  that  there- 
fore he  should  feel  it  his  bounden  duty  to  oppose 
any  proposition,  brought  forward  by  no  matter 
whom,  which  began  with  the  daring  and  impious 
suggestion  that  there  could  be  any  room  for  im- 
provement in  the  Constitution  which  the  wisdom  of 
our  ancestors  had  bequeathed  to  us. 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  lf$ 

The  Duke's  speech  certainly  did  not  sound  the 
death  knell  of  reform ;  but  it  did  sound  the  death 
knell  of  the  Wellington  Administration.  The 
country  had  quite  outgrown  the  time  when  it  could 
take  the  doctrine  from  anyone,  that  no  improve- 
ment could  ever  again  be  made  in  our  best  of  all 
possible  constitutions.  The  Duke's  colleagues  saw 
already  that  the  end  of  their  time  had  come. 

The  country  blazed  into  a  fury  of  passion  when 
the  words  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  were  known ; 
and  the  Ministry  became  more  unpopular  probably 
than  even  a  Tory  Ministry  ever  was  before  or  since 
in  England.  On  the  other  hand,  the  popularity  of 
the  King  went  up  at  this  crisis.  There  was  a  gen- 
eral idea  abroad  that  William  was  not  likely  to  en- 
courage or  stand  by  such  declarations  as  that  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington.  He  had  been  popular  at  one 
time,  chiefly  by  contrast  with  the  more  recent 
policy  of  his  predecessor,  and  there  was  a  general 
hope  that  the  Patriot  King,  as  he  was  called,  would 
turn  back  to  the  path  of  his  former  popularity.  It 
is  not,  perhaps,  quite  easy  to  understand  just  now 
why  such  high  expectations  were  formed  of  William 
IV. ;  but  at  all  events,  those  who  believed  that  he 
would  not  press  his  general  likings  and  dislikings  to 
the  verge  of  revolution  had  reason  afterwards  to 
congratulate  themselves  on  their  optimism. 

The  question  with  most  of  the  Ministers  was  now 
not  how  to  keep  in  office,  but  how  to  get  decently 
out  of  office.  Everyone,  with  perhaps  the  single 
exception  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  must  have 
seen  that  the  public  feeling  against  the  Tory  Gov- 


1 76  THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL 

ernment  was  too  strong  to  be  long  resisted ;  and  the 
Duke  of  Wellington,  to  do  him  justice,  did  not  care 
whether  he  was  in  office  or  out  of  office  so  long  as 
he  believed  that  he  had  done  what  he  considered  his 
duty.  The  end  came  about  by  what  might  almost 
be  called  a  matter  of  accident.  Sir  Henry  Parnell 
brought  forward  a  motion  in  the  House  of  Commons 
asking  for  the  appointment  of  a  Select  Committee 
to  take  into  consideration  the  estimates  and  amounts 
proposed  by  his  Majesty  regarding  the  Civil  List. 
Sir  Henry  Parnell,  who  afterwards  became  Lord 
Congleton,  was  one  of  the  family  of  the  poet  who 
was  popular  in  the  days  of  Swift  and  Addison,  and 
was  an  ancestor  of  the  Charles  Stewart  Parnell 
whose  name  was  afterwards  famous  in  the  debates 
of  the  House  of  Commons. 

Sir  Henry  Parnell's  motion  was  carried  by  a  ma- 
jority of  twenty-nine,  although  the  Government 
had  thrown  all  the  strength  they  had  into  opposing 
it.  The  motion  was  in  itself  hardly  one  of  first- 
class  importance.  A  Ministry  anxious  to  cling  to 
office  might  easily  have  taken  the  sting  out  of  it 
by  promising  some  sort  of  concession,  or  might 
have  allowed  it  to  pass  without  any  further  notice, 
as  is  done  with  so  many  a  resolution  brought  for- 
ward by  a  private  member,  and  not  directly  con- 
cerning any  Ministerial  scheme  actually  before  the 
House.  But  the  circumstances  were  peculiar,  and 
the  Government  thought  it  best  to  accept  the  pass- 
ing of  the  resolution  as  a  vote  of  censure ;  they  took 
advantage  of  the  opportunity,  fearing  that  if  they 
were  to  hold  office  they  might  be  defeated  a  little 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  Iff 

later  on  some  subject  more  serious  and  critical  in 
the  eyes  of  the  country.  It  is  quite  possible,  too, 
that  they  may  have  thought  it  a  good  stroke  of 
policy  to  accept  defeat  in  a  controversy  which  left 
to  them  the  appearance  of  having  forfeited  office 
while  defending  the  prerogative  of  the  Sovereign 
against  Whigs,  Radicals,  and  Revolutionists. 
Whatever  the  deciding  reason,  their  course  was 
promptly  taken.  Next  morning  they  tendered 
their  resignation  to  the  King,  and  the  resignation 
was  promptly  accepted.  Later  that  same  day  the 
House  of  Commons  was  informed  that  the  Duke  of 
Wellington's  Administration  had  ceased  to  exist, 
and  the  conviction  was  borne  in  upon  every  mind, 
that  Lord  Grey,  with  his  reform  scheme,  must  be- 
come the  head  of  the  next  Government.  The  an- 
ticipation was,  of  course,  fulfilled;  Lord  Grey  was 
at  once  sent  for  by  the  King  and  invited  to  form 
an  Administration. 

The  main  interest  as  to  the  members  of  the  new 
Administration  attached  to  Henry  Brougham  and  to 
Lord  John  Russell,  the  Earl  Russell  of  a  later  day. 
Brougham  was  to  be  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  the 
news  of  his  appointment  created  a  wild  display  of 
anger  among  his  opponents.  Brougham  had  made 
many  enemies;  in  his  outbursts  of  overwhelming 
and  reckless  eloquence  he  had  spared  no  opposing 
force,  man  or  institution,  that  came  in  his  way.  In 
the  House  of  Commons  he  had  sometimes  denounced 
his  antagonists  with  epithets  such  as  no  Speaker 
would  now  allow  to  be  uttered  in  that  assembly. 
The  position  of  Lord  Chancellor  is  one  of  the  very 


VOL.  I.— IS 


1 78  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

gravest  and  the  most  dignified  that  a  British  subject 
can  be  called  upon  to  occupy.  It  is  not,  indeed,  a 
position  of  great  political  influence,  for  the  Lord 
Chancellor  is  not  expected  to  take  frequent  part  in 
the  debates  of  the  House  of  Lords;  and,  of  course, 
it  is  assumed  that  he  will  not  there  display  himself 
as  a  political  partisan.  Nor  is  he  in  actual  fact  what 
he  is  very  often  called,  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  for  he  has  nothing  like  the  control  over  the 
Lords  which  every  Speaker  has  over  the  House  of 
Commons.  If  a  number  of  members  rise  together, 
the  Speaker  calls  on  one  of  them,  and  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  life  his  decision  is  accepted  without 
dispute.  But  if  a  number  of  peers  rise  together, 
each  claiming  to  be  heard,  the  Lord  Chancellor  has 
no  power  to  decide  who  is  to  address  the  assembly. 
The  Lords  decide  that  for  themselves  by  a  vote  of 
their  own,  if  necessary.  Nor  has  the  Lord  Chancel- 
lor any  right,  such  as  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Commons  has,  to  decide  upon  all  points  of  order; 
that  right,  too,  the  peers  retain  for  themselves. 
Still  the  position  of  Lord  Chancellor  is  very  high 
and  is  very  dignified.  The  Lord  Chancellor  is  de- 
clared to  be  the  keeper  of  the  Sovereign's  conscience, 
and  all  the  Tories  were  furious  with  anger  at  the 
thought  of  Henry  Brougham  being  exalted  to  such 
a  place.  The  King,  indeed,  himself  objected  to 
Brougham's  being  made  Lord  Chancellor;  but  he 
was  prevailed  upon  by  Lord  Grey  to  withdraw  his 
opposition  and  consent  to  the  appointment. 

Lord  Grey,  at  one  moment  of  the  controversy, 
suggested  a  possible  compromise.     He  advised  that 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  l?g 

Brougham  should  be  made  Master  of  the  Rolls — a 
position  next  in  rank  to  that  of  Lord  Chancellor; 
but  that  as  a  sop  to  Brougham's  well-known  love  of 
political  debate,  he  should  be  allowed  to  retain  his 
seat  in  the  House  of  Commons.  King  William 
made  to  this  the  very  shrewd  and  sensible  objection, 
that  to  make  Brougham  Master  of  the  Rolls,  and 
allow  him  still  to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
would  be  to  give  him  very  high  office  and  full  free- 
dom of  debate  as  well;  and  the  King  added  that 
there  was  no  knowing  whom  Brougham  might  not 
attack  if  he  were  allowed  the  chance.  Lord  Grey 
pointed  out  that  it  would  be  utterly  impossible  for 
any  Ministry  to  carry  any  reform  bill  if  the  co- 
operation of  Henry  Brougham  were  not  secured  in 
some  way.  These  may  not  seem  very  exalted  con- 
siderations to  govern  a  Prime  Minister  or  a  Sovereign 
in  the  Ministerial  appointments,  but  Lord  Grey  knew 
well  what  a  force  he  had  to  deal  with  when  he  was 
dealing  with  Brougham;  and  although  he  believed 
Lord  Brougham  to  be  a  thoroughly  sincere  reformer, 
yet  he  had  to  recognise  the  extraordinary  degree  of 
vanity  that  was  in  Brougham's  nature,  and  it  was 
clear  to  him  that  Brougham  was  not  a  man  to  be 
offended. 

Of  course  if  Brougham  had  been  left  out  of  the 
Cabinet  altogether  he  would  not,  and  could  not, 
have  turned  round  and  proclaimed  himself  hostile  to 
the  principle  of  political  reform ;  but  it  would  have 
been  very  easy  for  him  while  still  retaining  his 
character  of  advanced  reformer,  and  even  in  sus- 
tenance of  that  very  character,  to  keep  on  criticising 


180  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

every  clause  of  the  bill,  insisting  that  the  Govern- 
ment did  not  go  far  enough  here,  and  were  proving 
false  to  past  promises  there,  and  thus  appealing  at 
the  most  convenient  moments  from  half-hearted  re- 
formers in  the  House  of  Commons  to  whole-hearted 
reformers  outside  it.  The  bill  could  in  any  case 
only  be  carried  by  the  most  judicious  steersmanship 
and  by  the  most  extraordinary  blending  of  courage 
and  caution;  and  Lord  Grey  knew  very  well  that 
with  Brougham  as  an  ungracious  critic  the  measure 
could  not  be  carried  at  all.  Even  as  it  was,  some 
intimation  seems  to  have  got  to  Brougham  that 
there  was  a  delay  over  his  appointment,  and  at  first 
he  seemed  disposed  to  take  offence  and  decline  to 
hold  any  manner  of  office  in  the  new  Adminis- 
tration. But  Lord  Grey  contrived  to  get  over  Lord 
Brougham's  objections,  as  he  had  previously  got  over 
the  objections  raised  by  the  King,  and  it  was  soon 
made  known  to  the  world  that  Henry  Brougham, 
Harry  Brougham  as  he  was  more  usually  called,  was 
to  be  the  new  Lord  Chancellor  of  England. 

The  other  appointment  in  which  great  public  in- 
terest was  felt,  although  of  a  very  different  kind, 
was  that  of  Lord  John  Russell,  afterwards  Earl  Rus- 
sell. Lord  John  Russell  was  regarded  as  a  man  of 
the  most  brilliant  promise.  He  belonged  to  one  of 
the  great  historic  families  of  England,  a  family 
which  had  during  successive  centuries  written  its 
name  in  the  English  annals.  As  a  boy  he  had  sat 
at  the  feet  of  Fox ;  and  he  was  always  a  close  friend 
of  the  Irish  national  poet,  Thomas  Moore.  The 
writer  of  this  book  has  often  seen  Moore's  portrait 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  l8l 

in  its  place  of  honour  in  the  house  of  the  late 
Countess  Russell,  Lord  John's  widow.  Russell 
had  a  genuine  love  for  literature  as  well  as  for 
politics,  and  every  literary  man  of  his  time  was 
made  welcome  to  his  house.  He  had  acted  as 
private  secretary  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  during 
the  Peninsular  War,  and  had  visited  the  great 
Napoleon  at  Elba,  and  had  done  his  best  to  per- 
suade Napoleon  that  there  was  not  the  slightest 
likelihood  of  Wellington  attempting  to  seize  the 
Crown  of  England.  Napoleon  smiled  and  blandly 
submitted  as  to  the  judgment  of  an  expert;  but  he 
did  not  seem  absolutely  convinced — what,  after  all, 
could  be  more  natural  than  that  a  great  military 
conqueror  should  cast  a  longing  eye  upon  the  crown 
of  his  master  ? 

Lord  John  Russell  was  a  sincere  and  ardent 
champion  of  the  claims  of  Catholic  emancipation, 
as  he  was  indeed  a  champion  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty  all  over  the  world.  He  was  a  friend  to 
Greece,  and  did  all  that  came  within  his  reach  to 
forward  the  cause  of  Greek  independence.  His 
career,  so  far,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  had  been 
full  of  promise.  He  never,  perhaps,  rose  to  the 
height  of  great  parliamentary  oratory ;  his  presence 
was  not  commanding;  and  his  voice,  though  clear 
and  telling,  was  not  strong  or  resonant.  He  was 
not  a  great  orator  as  Robert  Peel  was,  and  as  Glad- 
stone and  Bright  afterwards  were.  But  he  was  a 
perfect  master  of  parliamentary  fence;  a  most  quick 
and  dangerous  antagonist.  No  one  was  happier 
with  a  bland  incisive  repartee,  with  an  epigram 


1 82  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

which  left  something  like  a  vitriolic  burn  behind  it. 
Some  of  us  can  well  remember  Lord  John  Russell 
during  his  later  years  in  the  House  of  Commons  and 
his  years  later  still  in  the  House  of  Lords.  Some 
of  us  have  often  thought  it  deeply  interesting  to 
listen  to  Russell's  words,  if  it  were  only  for  the 
reason  that  they  were  the  words  of  a  man  who  had 
talked  with  the  great  Napoleon  at  Elba.  But  Rus- 
sell's speeches  never  failed  to  be  interesting  in  them- 
selves ;  and  they  had  the  not  common  advantage  of 
being  as  good  to  read  as  they  were  good  to  hear. 
The  new  Ministry  has  to  be  remembered  for  the 
fact,  among  other  and  greater  facts,  that  Lord 
Palmerston  entered  into  office  under  Whig  auspices 
for  the  first  time.  Lord  Palmerston  became  Foreign 
Secretary,  and  with  that  office  all  the  best  days  of 
his  parliamentary  life  were  afterwards  associated. 

Lord  Grey  at  once  entrusted  to  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell the  principal  conduct  of  the  Reform  Bill  through 
the  House  of  Commons;  and  Lord  John  Russell 
went  into  communication  with  Grey's  son-in-law, 
Lord  Durham,  the  Durham  who,  as  John  George 
Lambton,  had  rendered  great  public  service  to  the 
reform  cause  already,  and  who  was  to  become  cele- 
brated afterwards  as  the  man  who  composed  the 
momentous  strife  between  Canada  and  the  mother 
country,  and  rendered  Canada  one  of  the  most 
prosperous  and  loyal  of  all  the  British  colonies. 
Lord  John  Russell  sketched  a  plan  of  reform,  which 
he  submitted  to  Lord  Durham.  On  the  whole, 
Lord  Durham  approved  of  it  with,  however,  certain 
amendments  of  his  own,  some  of  which  Lord  John 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  183 

Russell  readily  accepted.  The  plan  was  approved 
by  Earl  Grey,  and  was  then  submitted  to  the  King 
himself,  by  whom  it  was,  to  adopt  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell's own  words,  readily  and  cheerfully  sanctioned. 
But  the  scheme  was  kept  a  profound  secret  from  the 
outer  world.  All  Ministerial  schemes  are  supposed 
to  be  profound  secrets  until  the  moment  comes  for 
expounding  them  in  Parliament ;  but  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  things  the  purport  of  most  Ministerial 
schemes  does  happen  to  get  known  in  political  so- 
ciety somehow,  and  gives  a  subject  of  discussion  to 
the  clubs  and  the  dinner  tables  for  days  and  days 
before  the  authoritative  exposition  is  made.  In 
this  case,  however,  the  secret,  although  in  the  keep- 
ing of  more  than  thirty  men,  was  not  allowed  to  get 
out  to  the  public  anywhere,  and  conjecture  was 
busy  as  to  what  the  new  measure  was  to  be  even  in 
the  House  of  Commons  itself  on  the  very  day  when 
Lord  John  Russell  was  to  make  his  statement. 

It  was  thought  of  the  utmost  importance  by  Grey 
and  Russell  and  their  colleagues  that  the  opponents 
of  reform  should  not  have  an  opportunity  of  tearing 
the  bill  in  pieces,  or  rather  rending  it  by  pieces,  be- 
fore the  full  Ministerial  statement  could  be  brought 
under  the  attention  of  the  public.  It  must  be  re- 
membered that  in  the  House  of  Commons  there 
were  a  good  many  anti-reformers  not  to  be  found 
on  the  benches  of  the  Tory  Opposition.  Many  a 
professed  Liberal,  who,  if  once  the  public  outside 
showed  a  determination  to  accept  the  bill,  would 
not  have  ventured  to  say  a  word  against  it,  might 
yet  have  grasped  at  any  chance  of  decrying  certain 


1 84  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

of  its  details  and  turning  attention  away  from  its 
main  purpose  if  he  could  have  known  beforehand 
what  the  precise  contents  of  the  measure  were  to 
be.  Some  particular  clause,  weak  or  positively  de- 
fective in  itself,  some  clause  which  in  the  course  of 
the  parliamentary  proceedings  could  easily  have 
been  amended  as  the  bill  passed  through  committee, 
might  have  been  made  the  means  of  creating  a 
premature,  irrelevant,  and  yet  dangerous  discussion, 
filling  the  mind  of  reformers  out-of-doors  with  the 
idea  that  the  measure  would  never  do. 

On  the  ist  of  March,  1831,  Lord  John  Russell 
made  his  opening  statement  of  the  Government's 
proposals  on  the  subject  of  parliamentary  reform. 
Nothing  could  be  more  clear,  more  comprehensive, 
and  in  its  way  more  eloquent  than  Russell's  speech 
on  that  great  occasion.  The  speech  is  even  now  a 
most  interesting  and  a  most  important  historical 
document.  There  is  not,  perhaps,  anywhere  to  be 
found  in  our  parliamentary  records  an  exposition  so 
complete  and  yet  so  concise  of  the  reforms  which  it 
proposed  to  introduce  and  of  the  anomalies  and  the 
evils  which  it  proposed  to  abolish. 

It  seems  hard  now  to  understand  how  a  state 
which  at  one  time  possessed  a  full  understanding  of 
the  principle  of  a  representative  government  and  a 
system  which  very  fairly  corresponded  with  that 
principle,  should  have  come  in  the  process  of  gener- 
ations to  lose  all  the  reality  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment, and  to  sink  into  a  condition  of  things  which 
was  but  the  burlesque  of  a  representative  system. 
Russell's  speech  made  it  clear  that  this  was  the  fact, 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  1 8$ 

and  made  it  clear  also  how  the  fact  had  come  to  be 
in  existence.  "  The  ancient  Constitution  of  our 
country,"  said  Lord  John  Russell  in  his  opening 
sentences,  "  declares  that  no  man  should  be  taxed 
for  the  support  of  the  state  who  has  not  consented 
by  himself  or  by  his  representative  to  the  imposition 
of  those  taxes."  This,  of  course,  is  the  keynote  of 
the  whole  principle  of  representative  government. 
It  is  not  meant  to  be  understood,  as  some  of  Rus- 
sell's quibbling  and  feeble-minded  opponents  tried 
to  make  out  in  the  course  of  the  debate,  that  Lord 
John  was  laying  down  a  principle  which  amounted 
to  the  absurdity  that,  if  a  man  voted  against  a  tax, 
he  therefore  ought  not  to  be  called  upon  to  pay  it. 
The  meaning  of  Russell's  words,  which  these  right 
honourable  and  honourable  members  affected  not  to 
understand,  could  not  have  puzzled  for  one  moment 
the  mind  even  of  a  schoolboy  far  inferior  in  native 
understanding  to  the  intelligent  pupil  who  appears 
so  often  in  Lord  Macaulay's  Essays. 

Russell's  meaning  was  quite  clear;  and  his  ex- 
position of  the  representative  principle  could  not  be 
disputed.  The  principle  of  representative  govern- 
ment means  that  no  man  should  be  compelled  to 
pay  a  tax  who  has  not  had  an  opportunity,  by  him- 
self or  by  his  representative,  of  expressing  his 
opinion  as  to  whether  the  tax  was  or  was  not  one 
that  ought  to  be  imposed.  Of  course  a  majority 
must  decide  in  the  end,  or  there  could  be  no  repre- 
sentative government  at  all ;  for  representative  gov- 
ernment is  in  its  very  essence  government  by 
majority.  Lord  John  Russell  showed  that  at  one  time 


1 86  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

this  principle  of  representation  did  exist  in  England ; 
and  that  it  was  provided  by  English  law  that  each 
county  should  send  to  the  House  of  Commons 
two  knights — a  county  member  is  still  called  in 
formal  phrase  a  knight  of  the  shire ;  each  city,  two 
burgesses;  and  each  borough,  two  members. 
'  Thus,  no  doubt,"  said  Russell,  "  at  that  early 
period  the  House  of  Commons  did  represent  the 
people  of  England.  There  is  no  doubt,  likewise, 
that  the  House  of  Commons  does  not  now  represent 
the  people  of  England."  How  the  change  came 
about  has  already  been  shown  in  these  pages.  The 
whole  condition  of  the  country  had  meanwhile  been 
changing ;  some  of  the  boroughs  had  dwindled  away 
until  they  were  left  with  no  inhabitants  at  all,  but 
the  owner  of  the  soil  still  continued  to  return  him- 
self as  representative  of  the  little  desert  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  Great  towns  and  cities  were 
springing  up  everywhere  over  the  country,  but  these 
had  come  into  existence  too  late  to  have  the  benefit 
of  the  old  Constitution ;  and  the  people  of  England 
had  not  yet  exerted  themselves  to  create  a  new  Con- 
stitution suited  to  the  new  times. 

There  is  one  passage  in  Lord  John  Russell's 
speech  which  has  indeed  been  often  quoted  already, 
but  which  cannot  be  quoted  too  often,  cannot  be 
read  too  often  by  students  of  English  history,  and 
should  certainly  not  be  omitted  from  this  page. 
"  A  stranger  who  was  told  that  this  country  is  un- 
paralleled in  wealth  and  industry,  and  more  civilised 
and  more  enlightened  than  any  country  was  before 
it,  that  it  is  a  country  that  prides  itself  on  its  free- 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  l8/ 

dom,  and  that  once  in  every  seven  years  it  elects 
representatives  from  its  population  to  act  as  the 
guardians  and  preservers  of  that  freedom,  would  be 
anxious  and  curious  to  see  how  that  representation 
is  formed  and  how  the  people  choose  their  repre- 
sentatives, to  whose  fate  and  guardianship  they  en- 
trust their  free  and  liberal  Constitution.  Such  a 
person  would  be  very  much  astonished  if  he  were 
taken  to  a  ruined  mound,  and  told  that  that  mound 
sent  two  representatives  to  Parliament ;  if  he  were 
taken  to  a  stone  wall  and  told  that  three  niches  in 
it  sent  two  representatives  to  Parliament ;  if  he  were 
taken  to  a  park  where  no  houses  were  to  be  seen 
and  told  that  that  park  sent  two  representatives  to 
Parliament.  But  if  he  were  told  all  this  and  were 
astonished  at  hearing  it,  he  would  be  still  more 
astonished  if  he  were  to  see  large  and  opulent 
towns,  full  of  enterprise  and  industry  and  intelli- 
gence, containing  vast  magazines  of  every  species 
of  manufacture,  and  were  then  told  that  these 
towns  sent  no  representatives  to  Parliament." 
Then  Lord  John  went  a  step  farther,  but  in  a 
different  direction,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  his  in- 
telligent stranger  a  new  chance  of  surprise.  "  Such 
a  person,"  he  said,  "  would  be  still  more  astonished 
if  he  were  taken  to  Liverpool,  where  there  is  a  large 
constituency,  and  told,  here  is  a  fine  specimen  of  a 
popular  election.  He  would  see  bribery  employed 
to  the  greatest  extent  and  in  the  most  unblushing 
manner;  he  would  see  every  voter  receiving  a  num- 
ber of  guineas  in  a  box  as  the  price  of  his  corruption ; 
and  after  such  a  spectacle  he  would,  no  doubt,  be 


1 88  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

much  astonished  that  a  nation  whose  representatives 
are  thus  chosen  could  perform  the  functions  of  legis- 
lation at  all,  and  enjoy  respect  in  any  degree.  The 
confidence  of  the  country,"  Lord  John  went  on  to 
declare,  "  in  the  construction  and  constitution  of 
the  House  of  Commons  is  gone.  It  would  be  easier 
to  transfer  the  flourishing  manufactures  of  Leeds 
and  Manchester  to  Gatton  and  Old  Sarum  than  to 
re-establish  confidence  and  sympathy  between  this 
House  and  those  whom  it  calls  its  constituents." 

Nothing  could  be  more  complete  and  correct  as  a 
picture  than  this  vigorous  outline  which  Lord  John 
Russell  drew  of  the  majestic  fabric  of  the  British 
Constitution.  Had  he  had  time,  or  were  it  neces- 
sary to  elaborate  every  detail,  it  is  quite  certain  that 
the  more  he  worked  into  the  picture  the  more  ap- 
palling would  its  fidelity  become.  The  House  of 
Commons  listened  with  intense  interest  to  this  mas- 
terly exposition;  and  if  votes  were  to  be  governed 
merely  by  philosophical  conclusions  or  considera- 
tions of  unselfish  patriotism,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  House  must  then  and  there  have  decided 
to  accept  the  principle  that  reform  of  some  kind  was 
needed  for  such  a  Constitution.  But  then  came  the 
question,  What  kind  of  reform  had  the  Government 
to  propose ;  and  what  sort  of  reform  would  the  House 
of  Commons  be  likely  to  accept  ? 

In  judging  of  the  merits  of  the  whole  measure,  it 
is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  House  was 
divided  on  this  subject  into  three  classes  of  opinion. 
There  was  the  opinion  of  those  who  in  their  hearts 
were  opposed  to  all  manner  of  reform;  there  was 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  189 

the  opinion  of  those  who  would  have  liked  what 
they  considered  a  moderate  and  gradual  change; 
and  there  was  the  opinion  of  those,  strengthened  by 
a  great  popular  influence  out-of-doors,  who  were  not 
likely  to  be  thoroughly  satisfied  with  any  measure 
which  the  Government  might  see  their  way  to  offer. 
It  is  not  possible  to  appreciate  the  difficulty  of  Lord 
John  Russell's  task  if  we  do  not  give  due  account  to 
these  considerations. 

Lord  John  Russell  went  on  to  explain  that  there 
were  three  principal  grievances  which  the  Govern- 
ment proposed  to  abolish.  The  first  was  the  nomi- 
nation of  members  by  individual  patrons ;  the  second 
was  the  election  of  members  by  close  corporations ; 
and  the  third  was  the  expense  of  elections,  including 
the  vast  sums  squandered  on  bribery  and  corruption. 
Now,  to  begin  with,  Lord  John  proposed  to  deprive 
all  the  really  extinguished  boroughs  of  any  right  of 
nomination  whatever.  The  Gattons  and  Old  Sa- 
rums,  the  green  mounds  and  the  park  walls,  were  no 
longer  to  be  able  at  the  command  of  the  lord  of  the 
soil  to  send  up  a  so-called  representative  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  Further,  the  Government 
proposed  that  no  borough  which  had  less  than  one 
thousand  inhabitants  should  any  longer  be  allowed 
to  send  a  member  to  Parliament;  and  that  no 
borough  which  had  not  more  than  four  thousand  in- 
habitants should  be  allowed  to  return  more  than 
one  representative.  By  this  process  of  reduction 
the  number  of  members  would  become  less  than  it 
was  by  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight ;  and  Lord  John 
Russell  explained  that  the  Government  did  not  mean 


IQO  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

to  fill  up  the  whole  of  these  vacancies,  believing,  as 
they  did,  that  the  House  of  Commons  had  too  many 
members  already.  Many  years,  more  than  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century,  indeed,  after  this  announcement 
John  Bright  complained  that  the  House  of  Com- 
mons had  still  far  too  many  members;  and  as  he 
put  it  in  his  blunt  way,  the  House  was  sometimes 
an  orderly  and  sometimes  a  disorderly  mob,  but  that 
orderly  or  disorderly,  it  was  always  a  mob. 

Lord  John  Russell  went  on  to  say  that  the  neces- 
sity for  some  reduction  in  the  number  of  members 
in  the  House  was  all  the  more  necessary,  seeing  that 
he  hoped  the  attendance  in  future  would  be  that  of 
really  working  members ;  and  that  the  parliamentary 
roll  would  not  contain  the  names  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  gentlemen  who,  when  once  they  had  obliged 
themselves  or  their  patron  by  accepting  an  election 
to  Parliament,  took  care  to  live  their  lives  pleasantly 
abroad,  and  never  troubled  themselves  to  attend  the 
debates  and  divisions  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

Lord  John  Russell  announced  that  it  was  intended 
to  give  two  members  each  to  seven  large  towns 
which  had  not  had  previously  any  manner  of  repre- 
sentation. It  is  something  positively  amusing  now 
to  read  the  names  of  the  seven  towns  on  which  it 
was  proposed  to  confer  the  right  of  representation 
for  the  first  time.  These  towns  were  Manchester, 
Birmingham,  Leeds,  Greenwich,  Wolverhampton, 
Sheffield,  and  Sunderland.  Six  at  least  of  these 
towns  may  be  said  to  represent — might  even  then 
be  said  to  represent — the  growing  commercial  pro- 
sperity and  energy  of  England,  as  no  other  towns 


THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL  19! 

could  possibly  do.  Twenty  other  towns  of  smaller 
size  were  to  be  represented  each  by  one  member. 
The  metropolis  itself  was  to  have  eight  new  mem- 
bers, two  members  each  being  given  to  the  Tower 
Hamlets,  Holborn,  Finsbury,  and  Lambeth.  Each 
of  these  metropolitan  constituencies  is  now,  and  was 
even  then,  a  big  town  in  itself. 

The  Government  proposed  to  sweep  away  nearly 
all  the  complex  franchises — the  "  fancy  franchises," 
as  they  would  have  been  called  at  a  later  day ;  fran- 
chises conferred  in  many  instances  by  close  corpora- 
tions, often  from  selfish  and  corrupt  motives,  and 
some  of  which  did  not  even  carry  with  them  as  a 
qualification  for  the  right  to  vote  the  condition  that 
the  voter  must  reside  in  the  borough  whose  repre- 
sentative he  was  privileged  to  join  in  electing.  Lord 
John  Russell  proposed  as  far  as  possible  to  simplify 
the  voting  system,  and  to  make  it  at  least  similar 
in  principle  for  boroughs  and  for  counties.  In  the 
boroughs  a  resident  householder  paying  rates  for  a 
house  of  the  yearly  value  of  £10  and  upwards  was 
to  be  entitled  to  vote;  in  counties  a  copyholder  to 
the  value  of  £10  a  year,  who  was  also  qualified 
to  serve  on  juries,  and  a  leaseholder  for  not  less  than 
twenty-one  years,  whose  annual  rent  was  not  less 
than  .£50,  were  to  become  voters  at  once. 

Lord  John  Russell  attempted  to  deal  with  the 
expenses  of  elections  by  an  arrangement  that  the  poll 
should  be  taken  in  separate  districts,  so  that  no  voter 
should  have  to  travel  more  than  fifteen  miles  to 
record  his  vote;  and  also  by  limiting  the  duration 
of  the  poll  to  a  period  of  not  more  than  two  days. 


1 92  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

It  may  be  said  at  once  that  this  part  of  the  measure 
proved  utterly  inadequate  to  its  purpose.  Again 
and  again  have  subsequent  Governments  been  com- 
pelled to  introduce  new  measures  for  the  suppression 
and  for  the  punishment  of  bribery. 

For  more  than  forty  years  after  the  introduction 
of  the  first  Reform  Bill  the  question  of  bribery  re- 
mained an  open  scandal,  against  which  earnest 
reformers  were  never  tired  of  declaiming.  All  that 
can  be  said  of  the  Government  of  Earl  Grey  on  this 
score  is  that  they  had  an  extraordinary  piece  of 
complicated  work  to  undertake ;  and  that  to  carry  a 
really  effective  measure  for  the  extinction  of  bribery 
at  such  a  time  would  have  been  an  utter  impossibil- 
ity. Hogarth's  sketches  of  English  electioneering 
days  were  hardly  in  the  slightest  degree  caricatures 
of  the  system  which  prevailed  in  the  time  of  the 
first  Reform  Bill,  and  indeed  for  many  long  years 
after  its  introduction.  It  is  well  worthy  of  notice, 
is  indeed  a  very  interesting  fact,  that  in  the  speech 
which  Russell  made  when  moving  for  leave  to  bring 
in  the  bill  he  spoke  for  the  first  time  of  his  own 
friends  and  sympathisers  as  the  Reform  party,  and 
he  awarded  to  his  opponents  the  title  of  Conserva- 
tives. 

Lord  John  Russell,  as  has  been  said,  merely 
moved  for  leave  to  bring  in  the  bill.  That  is  one  of 
the  parliamentary  forms  of  the  House  of  Commons 
which  is  dispensed  with  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
Every  bill  in  both  Houses  must  have  three  readings; 
but  in  the  House  of  Lords  the  first  reading  is  ac- 
corded as  a  matter  of  right  to  the  member  who  in- 


THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL  193 

troduces  any  measure.  In  the  House  of  Commons 
the  first  reading  is  represented  by  a  motion  that 
leave  be  given  to  bring  in  the  bill;  and  although 
that  motion  is  not  much  opposed  or  much  debated, 
still  it  can  be  discussed  and  can  be  opposed. 

The  moment  Lord  John  Russell  had  closed  his 
speech,  the  Opposition  flamed  out  at  once.  Sir 
Robert  Harry  Inglis  was  the  first  man  to  rise  on  the 
part  of  the  Tory  Opposition.  Now  Sir  Robert 
Harry  Inglis  was  a  curious  sort  of  politician,  whose 
peculiarities  deserve  notice  all  the  more  because  he 
was  the  type  and  specimen  of  a  class  which  is  fast 
disappearing  from  the  civilised  countries  of  the 
world.  Inglis  represented  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  great  University  of  Oxford.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  highest  personal  and  political  integrity 
and  honour;  he  was  a  man  of  education,  a  man  of 
intellect,  an  effective  speaker;  but  he  was  the  very 
bond-slave  of  Tory  prejudice,  and  the  bitter  enemy 
of  every  measure  large  or  small  which  made  for 
political  progress.  His  name  is  still  well  remem- 
bered in  the  House  of  Commons;  some  of  us  can 
even  recall  a  recollection  of  the  man  himself,  for  his 
political  career  lasted  a  long  time,  and  he  was  a 
living,  walking,  speech-making  embodiment  of  an- 
tique Toryism.  His  speech  in  reply  to  Lord  John 
Russell  was  one  which  ought  to  have  been  preserved, 
if  only  as  a  specimen  of  the  kind  of  argument  which 
could  still  be  employed  in  the  House  of  Commons 
by  an  educated  English  gentleman  who  was  not 
supposed  to  have  any  tendency  to  insanity.  In- 
deed, the  speech  was  exactly  such  a  discourse  as 


194  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

Sydney  Smith  might  have  prepared  for  the  purpose 
of  throwing  ridicule  on  the  arguments  of  the  whole 
Tory  party. 

Reform  Sir  Robert  Inglis  declared  to  be  only 
revolution  under  a  feigned  name.  A  measure  like 
that  introduced  by  Lord  John  Russell  would  root 
out  all  the  benignant  influences  of  education,  prop- 
erty, and  rank.  Pass  such  a  measure  and  there 
would  be  no  more  gentlemen  and  no  more  scholars 
in  England,  and  everything  in  future  would  be  gov- 
erned there  by  the  caprice  of  an  ignorant  and  howling 
mob.  He  abandoned  himself  to  the  spirit  of  his 
argument  so  far  as  to  deny  in  the  most  solemn  man- 
ner that  any  English  law  or  English  custom  had  ever 
connected  taxation  and  representation.  He  went 
even  further  than  this ;  for  he  insisted  that  the  whole 
principle  of  representation  was  something  utterly 
foreign  and  unknown  to  the  British  Constitution. 
He  scoffed  at  the  idea  that  a  place  merely  because 
it  happened  to  be  a  large  and  prosperous  town,  with 
a  great  population,  was  any  the  better  entitled  to  be 
represented  in  Parliament  than  the  smallest  country 
village ;  and  he  maintained  that  the  principle  of  re- 
presentation was  that  the  Sovereign  should  invite 
whomsoever  he  pleased  to  represent  any  place, 
peopled  or  unpeopled,  which  the  Sovereign  gra- 
ciously chose  to  designate;  and  that  the  man  desig- 
nated should  thereupon  have  the  right  of  going  to 
Parliament,  to  confer  with  the  Sovereign  on  the 
affairs  of  the  country.  He  went  even  further  than 
this ;  he  exceeded  even  the  limits  of  anything  like 
artistic  caricature ;  for  he  openly  defended  and  glori- 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  195 

fied  the  purchase  of  small  boroughs,  and  triumph- 
antly pointed  out,  that  if  such  boroughs  were  not 
to  be  bought  and  sold  then  the  noblemen  of  the 
country,  the  persons  naturally  fitted  to  govern  the 
country,  would  have  no  representation  whatever  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  This  was,  perhaps,  the 
extreme  high-water  mark  of  the  most  antique 
Toryism. 

Sir  Robert  Inglis  naturally  defended  the  system 
of  small  boroughs — the  rotten  boroughs  as  they 
came  to  be  called — which  were  the  property  of  some 
owner  or  patron,  and  were  disposed  of  to  anybody 
whom  the  patron's  good  fancy  was  pleased  to 
favour.  He  hammered  away  at  this  argument  with 
a  certain  clap-trap  effect,  when  he  pointed  out  that 
a  number  of  the  greatest  public  men  who  had 
adorned  the  House  of  Commons  could  never  have 
had  seats  there  but  for  the  intelligence  and  generos- 
ity of  the  patrons  who  discovered  their  merits,  and 
endowed  them  with  a  constituency.  We  shall  pre- 
sently see  that  Sir  Robert  Inglis  was  not  the  only 
man  who  made  use  of  this  argument;  that  it  was 
used  again  and  again  by  men  far  better  entitled  to  a 
hearing  than  he ;  and  that  it  was  heard  of  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  introduction  of  the 
first  Reform  Bill. 

Sir  Robert  Inglis  then  went  on  to  enunciate  the 
proposition  dear  to  the  heart  of  good  old  Toryism  in 
every  country,  that  everything  would  be  peaceful 
and  happy,  if  only  a  flood  of  mob  oratory  were  not 
allowed  to  pour  itself  all  over  the  land.  Mob  ora- 
tory, with  men  like  Sir  Robert  Inglis,  meant  any 


196  THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL 

kind  of  eloquence  which  appealed  to  the  hearts  and 
the  brains  of  large  numbers  of  men ;  and  it  was  an 
article  of  faith  with  him  that  no  human  being  would 
ever  fancy  he  had  a  grievance  that  ought  to  be 
remedied  by  law,  if  some  mob  orator  did  not  get 
upon  an  inverted  tub  and  bellow  into  his  ears  a 
story  of  imaginary  wrong.  Robert  Inglis  is  dead 
and  gone  long  ago;  but  the  theory  that  popular 
commotion  never  springs  from  real  grievance,  but 
always  comes  from  the  wicked  inspirings  of  irre- 
sponsible agitators,  is  a  favourite  conviction  still 
with  the  reactionary  party  in  every  country  of  the 
world  where  men  form  parties  at  all,  and  where 
the  patrons  of  old  abuses  find  their  sole  enemies  in 
the  workings  of  popular  agitation. 

Not  long  after  Sir  Robert  Inglis  had  finished  his 
speech,  a  man  of  a  very  different  order  of  mind  and 
of  eloquence  rose  to  oppose  the  Ministerial  measure 
of  reform.  This  was  Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  second  of 
the  name,  the  great  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  we  may  fairly 
call  him.  Peel  was  a  Lancashire  man ;  and  it  is  a 
curious  fact,  that  Lancashire  has  contributed  to 
Parliament  the  four  greatest  orators  of  the  present 
reign:  Peel  himself,  Stanley,  afterwards  Earl  of 
Derby,  Gladstone,  and  John  Bright.  Peel's  speech 
against  the  Reform  Bill  is  said  to  have  been,  and  we 
can  well  believe  it,  a  masterpiece  of  parliamentary 
argument.  We  have  to  consider  what  must  have 
been  the  effect  of  the  noble  delivery,  the  exquisitely 
chosen  language,  the  appeals  skilfully  addressed  to 
ingrained  prejudice  and  old-established  ideas,  in 
order  to  understand  with  what  telling  force  such  a 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  197 

speech  must  have  fallen  upon  the  ears  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  We  have  to  bear  in  mind,  too,  that 
a  distinct  majority  of  those  who  listened  to  him 
were  in  their  secret  hearts  only  too  ready  to  admit 
the  justice  of  his  arguments.  But  let  any  reader 
take  up  the  speech  and  study  it  to-day,  and  the 
chances  are  many  to  one  that  the  first  feeling  it  will 
arouse  in  him  is  one  of  wonder  that  a  man  of  Peel's 
intellect  and  education  could  possibly  have  indulged 
in  such  chimeras  and  believed  them  to  be  guiding 
spirits. 

Peel  began  by  denouncing  all  those  who  had  in- 
cited the  people  to  a  pitch  of  frenzy,  and  spurred 
their  lazy  indifference  until  it  broke  into  a  revolu- 
tionary charge.  Peel,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
far-seeing  members  of  an  English  Parliament,  was 
in  this  kind  of  argument  putting  himself  on  an 
intellectual  level  with  Sir  Robert  Inglis.  According 
to  his  contention,  the  most  intelligent  Englishman, 
Irishman,  or  Scotchman  would  never  have  cared 
whether  boroughs  were  bought  or  sold,  or  not; 
would  never  have  seen  any  objection  to  a  deserted 
plain  returning  members  to  Parliament;  or  to  the 
Lord  of  the  Manor  nominating  members  to  please 
himself  or  some  of  his  friends,  to  reward  a  parasite, 
or  to  please  a  pretty  woman ;  would  never  have  had 
the  least  idea  that  there  was  anything  wrong,  or  un- 
constitutional, or  dangerous,  or  degrading  in  all  this, 
if  only  the  wicked  popular  agitators  would  let  him 
alone,  and  not  try  to  excite  him  to  delirium. 

Then  came  the  appeal,  which  some  of  my  readers 
have  been  no  doubt  already  anticipating,  the  de- 


198  THE   GREA  T  HE  FORM  BILL 

mand  how  even  the  wickedest  of  agitators  could  be 
wicked  enough  to  raise  such  questions  at  a  time 
when  our  foreign  relations  were  passing  through  so 
profound  and  grave  a  crisis.  This,  of  course,  is  the 
sort  of  appeal  that  is  always  introduced  when  any 
measure  of  reform  is  proposed.  What !  while  France 
is  in  the  throes  of  a  new  revolution,  is  that  the  time 
to  unsettle  our  minds  by  tormenting  us  about  rotten 
boroughs  and  unenfranchised*  millions  ?  "  Better  a 
rotten  borough  or  two,"  sang  Tennyson  many  years 
later,  "  than  a  rotten  fleet  and  towns  in  flames." 
Tennyson,  however,  was  a  singer,  and  did  not  pre- 
tend to  any  knowledge  of  political  affairs,  and  was 
not  called  upon  by  anybody  to  explain  how  the 
maintenance  of  the  rotten  boroughs  was  to  keep  a 
fleet  from  rotting  and  a  town  from  foreign  bombard- 
ment. Even  if  the  condition  of  things  had  been 
quite  different  from  that  which  Peel  fairly  described 
it  to  be,  Peel  might  have  used  his  argument  just  as 
effectively  in  another  way.  He  might  have  asked, 
is  it  at  a  moment  like  this,  when  peace  prevails  at 
home  and  abroad,  that  you  are  going  to  allow  your 
wicked  agitators  to  disturb  a  nation  and  a  world  at 
rest  ? 

Nobody  could  have  known  better  than  Peel  did, 
that  the  revolution  in  France  was  brought  about  by 
the  dogged  determination  of  the  rulers  of  that 
country  not  to  allow  any  measure  of  even  the  most 
moderate  reform.  He  went  over  again,  although 
with  greater  dexterity  and  effect,  the  argument  of 
Sir  Robert  Inglis  in  favour  of  the  close-borough 
system.  "  Consider,"  he  urged,  "  the  number  of 


THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL  199 

men  who  had  guided  and  illumined  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  who  might  never  have  had  a  chance 
of  finding  a  seat  there  if  it  were  not  for  the  exist- 
ence of  those  small  close  boroughs  which  the  present 
measure  proposed  altogether  to  disfranchise."  He 
ran,  indeed,  over  a  glittering  bead-roll  of  names — 
Burke,  Pitt,  Fox,  Plunket,  Canning,  Brougham,  and 
many  other  great  men  were  all  returned  in  the  first 
instance  for  close  boroughs  at  the  nomination  of  a 
patron.  This  same  kind  of  argument  was  used 
many  years  later  by  Peel's  greatest  parliamentary 
successor,  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  argument,  of  course, 
leaves  out  of  all  account  the  infinite  anomalies  and 
abominations  which  the  old  system  brought  with  it ; 
the  patronage,  the  bribery,  the  corruption,  the  sub- 
jection of  the  nation's  best  interests  to  the  caprice 
or  the  selfish  purposes  of  a  few  owners  of  the  soil. 

The  fact  could  not  be  disputed  that  there  were 
owners  of  boroughs,  here  and  there,  generous  and 
enlightened  enough  to  see  the  merits  of  men  like 
Burke  and  Plunket  and  Canning,  and  to  hand  over 
to  them  constituencies  which  they  could  not  possibly 
have  purchased  for  themselves.  But  has  it  ever  been 
shown  that  a  great  and  populous  borough  would  be 
in  the  least  degree  less  likely  than  a  patron  or  a  close 
corporation  to  appreciate  the  gifts  of  such  men,  and 
to  give  them  a  chance  in  the  House  of  Commons  ? 
In  the  England  of  our  time,  a  new  man  of  great 
abilities  and  without  money  would  find  a  much 
better  chance  of  a  seat  in  Parliament  by  addressing 
himself  to  some  large  and  populous  borough,  where 
the  spread  of  education  was  telling  on  the  electors, 


2OO  THE  GREA  T  REFORM  BILL 

than  he  would  have  in  some  much  smaller  constitu- 
ency, where  mere  local  influence  and  local  patronage 
would  be  only  too  likely  to  carry  the  day  against 
the  stranger. 

During  the  course  of  the  debate,  a  very  remark- 
able speech  was  made  by  the  Irish  leader,  Daniel 
O'Connell.  O'Connell  seems  to  have  seen  farther 
and  more  distinctly  into  the  future  than  any  other 
of  the  great  orators  who  took  part  in  the  discussion. 
He  declared  that  he  would  give  the  bill  his  full  sup- 
port ;  but  that  it  was  not  the  sort  of  measure  that  he  as 
a  Radical  reformer  would  have  wished  to  introduce. 
The  main  defect  of  the  bill,  he  said,  was  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  it  was  not  a  measure  of  radical  re- 
form. No  such  measure,  he  insisted,  could  ever 
give  abiding  satisfaction  to  the  country  which  did 
not  recognise  the  principle  of  universal  suffrage ;  and 
he  contended  that  the  durations  of  Parliament  ought 
to  be  made  shorter,  and  that  the  votes  of  the  elect- 
ors ought  to  be  taken  by  ballot.  Already,  it  has  to 
be  observed,  we  have  in  Great  Britain  something 
nearly  approaching  to  manhood  suffrage,  and  we 
have  vote  by  ballot,  and  there  is  not  a  reactionary 
in  his  senses  who  believes  that  the  people  of  these 
countries  could  ever  be  induced  to  return  to  the  old 
franchise  and  the  old  system  of  the  open  vote. 

The  debate  on  the  first  reading  was  carried  on  for 
seven  nights.  As  we  have  already  said,  there  is  very 
seldom  a  division  taken  on  the  first  reading  of  any 
measure.  The  second  reading,  when  it  comes  on, 
brings  up  a  debate  on  the  actual  principle  of  the 
bill ;  and  a  man  who  votes  against  the  second  read- 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  2OI 

ing  thereby  declares  that  he  disapproves  of  the 
whole  purpose  which  the  promoters  of  the  bill  have 
in  view.  But  he  may  vote  for  the  second  reading 
while  firm  in  the  intention  to  make  every  alteration 
he  can  in  the  provisions  of  the  bill  as  it  passes 
through  what  is  called  committee  stage,  after  second 
reading ;  that  being  the  stage  at  which  the  bill  comes 
up  for  the  consideration  of  all  its  separate  clauses 
and  details.  Many  a  Member  of  Parliament  votes 
for  the  second  reading  of  a  bill  in  the  hope  that  he 
may  so  damage  it  in  committee  as  to  leave  it  worth 
nothing  to  its  promoters. 

Many  observers,  themselves  hostile  to  reform, 
were  of  opinion  then,  and  many  historical  writers 
have  been  of  opinion  since,  that  the  Tories  made  an 
entire  mistake  in  their  way  of  dealing  with  the  meas- 
ure. The  great  difficulty  of  the  bill,  according  to 
these  observers  and  writers,  lay  not  so  much  in  the 
House  of  Commons  as  outside  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Even  within  the  House,  as  we  have  already 
shown,  there  were  many  sincere  reformers  who  put 
up  with  the  bill  rather  than  welcomed  it ;  who  were 
willing  to  take  it  because  they  were  afraid  that  they 
could  get  nothing  better  just  at  that  time;  but  who 
fully  shared  the  opinions  of  Mr.  O'Connell  as  to  the 
impossibility  of  its  proving  adequate  to  the  work  of 
a  lasting  settlement.  Outside  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  feeling  of  the  Reform  party  was  much 
stronger  still.  It  would  have  required  all  the  influ- 
ence of  Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John  Russell  and  Lord 
Durham  and  other  such  men  to  induce  the  country 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  measure.  The  opinion, 


202  THE   GREA  T  REFORM  BILL 

therefore,  of  the  critics,  to  whom  allusion  has  been 
made,  was  that  the  policy  of  the  Tory  Opposition 
would  have  been  to  show  no  inveterate  and  determ- 
ined hostility  to  the  bill,  to  criticise  it  and  censure 
it,  but  not  to  make  too  much  of  it ;  and  let  the  at- 
tention of  reformers  outside  Parliament  be  turned 
rather  to  the  unsatisfactory  character  of  the  measure 
itself,  than  to  the  impassioned  and  wholesale  oppo- 
sition of  the  Tories. 

It  is  hardly  probable  that  in  any  case  the  Tory 
Opposition  of  that  day,  with  men  like  Sir  Robert 
Inglis  and  his  friends  to  urge  them  on,  could  have 
been  capable  of  any  such  subtle  policy  as  that  which 
was  recommended  to  them.  But  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  fury  of  the  Tories  went  a  good  way 
to  make  the  bill  more  popular  than  it  otherwise 
might  have  been.  It  was  almost  enough  for  many 
of  the  reformers  in  the  country,  and  especially  in 
the  great  towns,  to  know  that  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton and  Lord  Sidmouth  and  Sir  Robert  Inglis  and 
others  were  set  against  the  bill,  in  order  to  make  all 
true  reformers  throw  up  their  caps  for  it.  The 
measure  had,  undoubtedly,  two  or  three  splendid 
merits.  It  abolished  the  principle  of  nomination  to 
Parliament  by  owners  or  by  close  corporations;  it 
established  something  like  a  symmetrical  system  of 
voting  all  over  the  country;  it  restored  the  principle 
of  representation ;  and  it  added  about  half  a  million 
to  the  voters  of  the  United  Kingdom.  But  in 
almost  every  other  of  its  objects  the  Reform  Bill 
fell  far  short  of  the  necessities  of  the  country ;  and 
the  proof  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  number  of 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  203 

other  Reform  Bills  that  had  to  be  introduced  in  order 
to  supplement  and  amend  and  reconstruct  it. 

The  extension  of  the  suffrage  was  still  miserably 
inadequate;  and  practically  the  whole  .working 
population  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  was  left 
without  the  chance  of  a  vote — that  is,  without  any 
direct  share  whatever  in  the  government  of  the 
country  with  which  its  own  dearest  interests  were 
bound  up.  Some  of  the  closing  sentences  in  Lord 
John  Russell's  speech  were  full  of  an  earnest  and 
generous  hope  as  to  the  result  which  the  measure 
might  have,  by  stimulating  the  working  classes  gen- 
erally to  steady  conduct,  praiseworthy  frugality,  and 
honourable  ambition,  in  order  that  they  might  be- 
come legally  possessed  of  the  quality  of  citizenship. 
But  the  £10  franchise  in  boroughs  and  the  ^"50 
franchise  in  counties  left  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
honest  men  without  the  slightest  chance  of  gratify- 
ing their  honourable  ambitions.  Ten  pounds  a  year 
rent  in  boroughs,  and  fifty  pounds  a  year  in  coun- 
ties, meant  much  more  money  at  that  time  than  the 
same  figures  would  mean  now.  But  even  the  more 
advanced  reformers  were  willing  to  put  up  with  a 
good  deal  of  deficiency  in  order  to  get  a  reform  bill 
of  some  kind,  which  at  least  established  the  principle 
of  direct  representation.  The  reformers  out-of-doors, 
therefore,  welcomed  with  general  enthusiasm  the  first 
reading  of  the  bill ;  and  that  first  reading  was  fol- 
lowed at  once  by  the  first  reading  of  measures  of 
the  same  kind  for  Scotland  and  for  Ireland. 

On  the  2ist  of  March,  1831,  Lord  John  Russell 
moved  the  second  reading  of  the  English  Reform 


204  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

Bill.  The  second  reading  was  strongly  resisted, 
and  the  Tory  speakers  who  had  argued  against  the 
first  reading,  declaimed  their  arguments  all  over 
again.  Three  hundred  and  two  members  voted  for 
the  second  reading,  and  three  hundred  and  one 
against  it.  The  second  reading,  therefore,  embody- 
ing the  whole  purpose  of  the  bill,  was  carried  only 
by  a  majority  of  one.  The  wildest  exultation  broke 
out  along  the  ranks  of  Opposition.  Every  Tory  in 
the  House  felt  satisfied  that  a  bill  which  passed  its 
second  reading  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  only 
a  majority  of  one  would  not  have  the  slightest 
chance  of  dragging  itself  through  committee  with- 
out some  mutilation  of  its  principal  clauses  which 
would  leave  it  an  object  of  pity  to  its  friends  and  of 
ridicule  to  its  enemies.  The  end  of  that  particular 
struggle  came  even  sooner  than  was  expected.  An 
amendment  proposed  by  a  Tory  member,  which 
declared  that  the  number  of  knights,  citizens,  and 
burgesses  ought  not  to  be  diminished,  was  opposed 
by  Lord  Althorp  as  fatal  to  the  value  of  the  bill ; 
and  there  were  two  hundred  and  ninety-nine  votes 
for  the  amendment  and  two  hundred  and  ninety- 
one  against  it.  The  Government  were,  therefore, 
defeated  by  a  majority  of  eight  votes.  There  was 
an  end  of  that  particular  measure,  at  all  events. 

Lord  Grey  and  his  colleagues  were  not  in  the  least 
dismayed.  They  determined  at  once  to  dissolve 
Parliament  and  appeal  to  the  country  by  a  general 
election,  for  a  reversal  of  the  decision  given  by  the 
majority  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  first 
trouble  the  Ministry  had  was  with  the  Patriot  King. 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  2O$ 

William  IV.  seemed  to  think  it  a  monstrous  thing 
that  he  should  be  asked  to  dissolve  a  Parliament 
which  had  just  been  gathered  together,  after  the 
cost  and  turmoil  of  a  general  election,  only  to  put 
the  country  to  the  cost  and  turmoil  of  another  gen- 
eral election ;  and  all  for  the  sake  of  carrying  a  Re- 
form Bill,  about  which  the  Sovereign  himself  felt  no 
manner  of  personal  enthusiasm.  On  Lord  Grey  and 
Lord  Brougham  fell  the  conduct  of  the  negotiations, 
and  Lord  Brougham  as  keeper  of  the  King's  con- 
science had  to  bear  the  brunt  of  the  more  intimate 
struggle.  All  sorts  of  stories  were  told  about  the 
King's  efforts  at  resistance  and  Lord  Brougham's 
efforts  at  persuasion ;  and  it  had  never  been  sup- 
posed by  anybody  that  bland  persuasiveness  was 
one  of  Brougham's  endowments.  One  legend  is  to 
the  effect  that  Brougham  might  never  have  prevailed 
over  his  Sovereign,  if  it  had  not  been  astutely  con- 
veyed to  the  Sovereign's  ears,  that  certain  leading 
Tory  peers  had  denied  to  his  Majesty  any  constitu- 
tional right  of  dissolving  a  Parliament  under  such 
conditions.  Thereupon,  so  ran  the  story,  the  King 
declared  that  if  the  peers  dared  to  dispute  his  pre- 
rogative he  would  show  them  that  he  was  determined 
to  exercise  it.  The  story  probably  is  not  true,  al- 
though it  found  many  believers  at  the  time. 

However,  the  one  thing  certain  is  that  the  King 
showed  his  good  sense  by  allowing  himself  to  be 
prevailed  upon,  and  he  consented  to  go  down  to  the 
House  of  Lords  and  declare  the  dissolution  of  the 
Parliament.  Now  this,  at  all  events,  was  recognised 
by  everyone  as  a  step  in  advance  of  any  that  would 


2O6  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

probably  have  been  taken  by  William's  recent  pre- 
decessors, under  similar  circumstances ;  and  it  gained 
new  credit  for  the  King  among  the  reformers  of  the 
country.  Without  William's  assent  the  dissolution, 
of  course,  could  not  take  place;  and  therefore  the 
mere  announcement  that  Parliament  was  to  be  dis- 
solved was  enough  to  convince  all  the  reformers  of 
the  country  that  the  Sovereign  had  accepted  the 
views  of  his  constitutional  advisers  and  that  William 
had  justified  by  his  action  the  title  of  a  Patriot  King. 
So  far  as  can  be  guessed,  the  King  was  pleased  by 
the  title ;  and  was  hopeful  of  continuing  to  deserve 
it,  although  he  probably  could  not  help  wishing 
every  now  and  then  to  have  a  little  more  of  his  own 
way  than  was  permitted  to  him  by  the  stately  and 
unbending  Earl  Grey,  and  the  passionate  and  some- 
times blusterous  Lord  Brougham.  The  King  then 
gave  his  consent,  and  went  down  to  the  House  of 
Lords  and  dissolved  the  Parliament. 

The  event  was  received  with  tumultuous  delight 
in  London,  and  in  nearly  all  the  great  towns,  and 
indeed  all  over  the  country.  London  was  illumin- 
ated, and  so  were  most  of  the  large  provincial  cities. 
Unfortunately  the  exultations  were  accompanied  by 
a  certain  degree  of  violence.  In  the  West  End  of 
London  many  of  the  opponents  of  reform  refused 
to  put  lights  in  their  windows,  and  the  windows  of 
such  recusants  were  smashed  by  a  roaring  crowd. 
Apsley  House,  the  town  residence  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  has  a  side  row  of  windows  which  look 
into  Hyde  Park.  There  was  a  noisy  demonstration 
outside  the  house,  and  the  Hyde  Park  windows  were 


THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL  2O/ 

all  smashed  to  pieces.  The  Duke  of  Wellington's 
own  comment  on  the  event  was  that  the  demonstra- 
tion of  hostility  ought  to  have  taken  place — it  was 
then  the  month  of  June — on  the  fifteenth  of  that 
month,  the  day  of  the  crowning  victory  of  Waterloo. 
"  That  day  he  overcame  the  Nervii,"  is  the  heart- 
thrilling  line  in  which  Shakespeare's  Mark  Antony 
tells  how  the  wound  of  the  assassin's  dagger  came 
in  Caesar's  mantle ;  in  that  mantle  which  he  put  on 
for  the  first  time  on  a  summer's  evening  in  his  tent 
after  his  victory.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  was 
probably  not  a  great  student  of  Shakespeare,  and 
in  any  case  he  was  not  egotistic  enough  to  think  of 
applying  to  himself  the  words  that  related  to  Julius 
Caesar;  but  the  application  might  have  been  made 
for  all  that.  The  mob,  however,  did  no  great  harm, 
and  did  not  mean  to  do  much  harm.  They  broke 
the  unlighted  windows  as  a  London  mob  of  June, 
1897,  might  possibly,  without  meaning  much  harm, 
have  broken  some  windows  kept  ostentatiously  dark, 
on  the  night  of  the  Queen's  Jubilee  Celebration. 
But  the  Duke,  undoubtedly,  took  the  insult  to 
heart ;  and  for  some  years  the  windows  that  turned 
on  the  park  were  kept  rigidly  shuttered. 

When  the  election  began,  the  contest  was  kept  up 
on  both  sides  with  an  utter  prodigality  of  expense. 
There  was  not  much  to  be  said  in  favour  of  one  side 
against  the  other,  so  far  as  bribery  and  corruption 
were  concerned.  Bribery  and  corruption  ran  their 
unblushing  way  among  Liberals  and  Tories,  through- 
out nearly  all  the  constituencies.  As  the  results 
began  to  be  known,  it  was  found  that  nearly  all  the 


208  THE   GREAT  REFORM  BILL 

cities  and  great  towns  were  on  the  side  of  Lord 
Grey  and  Lord  John  Russell.  One  of  the  most 
conspicuous  opponents  of  the  Reform  Bill  was  turned 
out  of  the  important  town  of  Liverpool  by  an  im- 
mense majority  of  votes.  Many  of  the  counties 
had  likewise  "  gone  solid  "  for  reform,  to  use  a 
phrase  familiar  in  modern  politics.  There  was  no 
mistaking  the  meaning  of  all  this ;  the  feeling  of  the 
country  was  distinctly  in  favour  of  reform.  The  new 
Parliament  was  opened  on  June  2ist  by  William  IV. 
in  person;  and  as  the  King  went  in  state  to  the 
House  of  Lords  he  was  received  with  immense  en- 
thusiasm by  the  crowds  who  thronged  the  streets. 
William  enjoyed  the  enthusiasm  very  much,  and 
was  more  than  ever  satisfied  of  his  just  claim  to  the 
title  of  Patriot  King. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   REFORM   BILL  AGAIN 

ON  the  24th  of  June,  Lord  John  Russell  intro- 
duced a  second  Reform  Bill  which  might  be 
called  just  the  same  in  principle  and  substance  as 
that  which  he  had  brought  in  on  the  former  occa- 
sion. The  second  reading  was  moved  for  on  the  4th 
of  July ;  and  after  a  debate  of  three  nights  a  division 
was  taken,  and  the  second  reading  was  carried  by 
three  hundred  and  sixty-seven  votes  for,  and  two 
hundred  and  thirty-one  against — a  majority  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty -six  in  favour  of  the  principle  of 
the  measure.  This  put  an  end  to  all  hope  on  the 
part  of  the  Tories  that  anything  could  be  done  in 
the  way  of  direct  opposition  to  the  Reform  Bill. 
But  now  the  Tories  put  into  action  for  the  first  time, 
on  a  great  and  systematic  scale,  those  tactics  of  par- 
liamentary obstruction  which  have  become  so  famil- 
iar to  the  political  world  in  more  modern  days. 

The  forms  of  the  House  of  Commons  then,  and 
even  to  a  much  later  time,  afforded  infinite  oppor- 
tunities for  the  reckless  ingenuity  of  Tory  members 
to  find  means  of  postponing  and  postponing  any 
chance  of  coming  to  a  decision  upon  anything.  It 

VOL.  I. — 14 

200 


210  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

will  be  interesting  to  give  some  illustration  of  the 
manner  in  which  this  system  of  interruption  was  kept 
up  without  actually  violating  any  of  the  rules  of 
order  which  govern  the  proceedings  of  the  House. 
For  instance,  what  could  be  more  reasonable  than  for 
any  member  who  thought  the  House  had  sat  and  de- 
bated long  enough  on  that  particular  subject,  to  rise 
and  move  that  the  House  do  now  adjourn  ?  Every 
sitting  of  the  House  is  brought  to  a  close  by  a  motion 
couched  in  just  such  a  form,  which  on  all  ordinary 
occasions  and  at  a  reasonable  hour  of  the  night  is 
agreed  to  without  discussion  or  division.  But  in  the 
instances  we  are  describing  a  member  who  moved  that 
the  House  do  now  adjourn  had  not  the  slightest  de- 
sire that  the  question  should  be  put  to  an  instant  divi- 
sion ;  he  wanted  all  the  debate  that  he  could  have ; 
he  wanted  to  help  in  wearing  the  Government  out. 
Therefore  he  gave  all  the  reasons  that  occurred  to 
him,  all  that  his  uttermost  ingenuity  could  devise, 
to  show  that  the  House  was  bound  to  adjourn  just 
then ;  and  he  gave  his  reasons  at  immense  length, 
and  went  over  them  again  and  again  as  if  he  had 
taken  all  time  for  his  province. 

In  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia  we  are  told  of  a 
beautiful  young  shepherd-boy  who  stands  under  the 
trees  on  some  fair  summer's  evening  piping  as 
though  he  should  never  grow  old.  There  is  some- 
thing charming  in  the  idea  of  this  young  lover  of 
music,  piping  on  and  on,  as  though  youth  and  har- 
mony were  to  be  always  his  own.  The  Conservative 
orator  talked  in  favour  of  adjournment  as  though  he 
should  never  grow  old,  as  though  he  had  all  time 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  211 

before  him ;  but  his  was  not  quite  so  picturesque  a 
figure  as  that  drawn  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  When 
one  Conservative  orator  had  finished  his  speech, 
another  Conservative  orator  took  up  the  tale,  and 
yet  another,  and  another;  until  at  last  it  was 
thought  to  be  convenient  for  a  division  to  be  taken. 
The  majority,  of  course,  voted  for  going  on  with 
the  business  and  making  some  progress  with  the 
Reform  Bill,  and  the  motion  for  adjournment  was 
therefore  defeated.  But  the  Tory  tactics  endured, 
and  a  moment  after  the  division  had  been  declared 
some  Tory  member  got  up  and  moved  that  the 
Speaker  do  now  leave  the  chair,  which  was  only 
another  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  bill  for  that  sitting. 
Then  came  another  long  debate  and  another  division ; 
and,  the  Tories  being  once  more  defeated,  some  Tory 
member  fell  back  on  the  old  motion  that  the  House 
do  now  adjourn.  This  was  in  strict  accordance  with 
the  rules,  which  did  not  allow  precisely  the  same 
motion  to  be  made  twice  in  succession ;  and  so  the 
alternate  motions  that  the  House  do  now  adjourn, 
and  that  the  Speaker  do  leave  the  chair,  were  kept 
up  until  breakfast  time  in  the  morning,  and  then  the 
members  were  allowed  to  go  to  their  homes,  having 
to  meet  again  at  three  that  afternoon.  For  day 
after  day  and  night  after  night  this  sort  of  thing 
went  on.  Nobody  in  the  House  listened  to  the  de- 
bates, nobody  outside  the  House  paid  the  slightest 
attention  to  what  the  Tories  were  saying. 

The  one  question  of  keen  public  interest  was  how 
long  the  Government  could  hold  out  against  this 
peculiar  kind  of  opposition.  It  might  be  taken  for 


212  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

granted  that  after  a  certain  period  in  the  year  it 
would  be  all  but  impossible  to  keep  the  House  of 
Commons  together ;  even  the  most  earnest  reformers 
had  other  duties  to  discharge  besides  waiting  for  the 
divisions  on  the  motion  that  the  House  do  now 
adjourn.  Many  of  Lord  Grey's  followers  began  to 
be  seriously  afraid  that  the  whole  session  might  be 
wasted  without  advancing  the  reform  scheme  in  any 
measurable  degree  towards  success.  The  Govern- 
ment, however,  held  firm ;  and  the  disfranchisement 
of  what  were  called  the  rotten  boroughs  was  abso- 
lutely accomplished  so  far  as  the  House  of  Commons 
could  accomplish  it.  Then  came  the  struggle 
over  the  reduction  in  the  representation  of  various 
boroughs  from  two  members  to  one  member.  Here- 
upon the  obstruction  got  up  again,  alive  and  fully 
armed  for  the  work.  The  methods  of  obstruction 
had  by  this  time  been  organised  and  arranged  as 
by  a  regular  process  of  drill.  It  is  well  to  learn 
something  on  this  subject  from  Mr.  Molesworth's 
excellent  History  of  the  Reform  Bill.  Mr.  Moles- 
worth  tells  us — and  the  facts  are  indeed  beyond  dis- 
pute— that  there  was  a  regular  division  of  labour  in 
the  work  of  obstruction,  arranged  and  superin- 
tended by  a  committee  of  which  Sir  Robert  Peel 
was  chairman. 

Now  we  have  had  a  good  deal  of  obstruction, 
deliberate  and  purposed  obstruction,  in  the  House 
of  Commons  in  later  days ;  but  it  never  happened 
since  1831  that  a  statesman  of  the  rank  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  became  president  of  a  committee  for  the  ex- 
press and  the  sole  purpose  of  arranging  and  supply- 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  213 

ing  a  mere  obstruction  by  speech-making,  to  prevent 
a  popular  measure  from  passing  on  its  way  through 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  same  arguments  were 
repeated  over  and  over  again  without  the  slightest 
pretence  of  a  desire  to  find  something  new.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  himself  set  a  good  example  to  his  com- 
rade-obstructionists. During  one  stage  of  the  de- 
bate he  delivered  no  less  than  forty-eight  speeches. 
Mr.  Wilson  Croker,  a  literary  critic  whom  Macaulay 
made  famous  by  his  scathing  essay,  and  who  was  for 
a  long  time,  when  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty,  the 
target  of  some  of  Lord  Cochrane's  most  dashing  and 
bitter  attacks, — Mr.  Wilson  Croker  spoke  fifty-seven 
times.  Sir  Charles  Wetherell,  who  has  been  already 
mentioned  in  this  history  as  a  type  Tory  of  the  ex- 
tinct school,  went  one  speech  better,  for  he  spoke 
fifty-eight  times. 

In  the  meantime,  the  reformers  of  the  country 
were  not  idle.  Meetings  were  held  in  London  and 
in  most  of  the  towns,  calling  on  the  Government  to 
take  heart  of  grace,  and  not  to  give  in  to  the  Tories 
by  a  single  inch,  but  to  keep  Parliament  sitting  until 
the  bill  should  have  gone  through  its  every  stage. 
The  Government  answered  pluckily  to  these  appeals. 
A  meeting  of  influential  supporters  of  the  Ministry 
was  held  in  the  Foreign  Office ;  and  to  that  meeting 
Lord  Althorp  declared,  on  behalf  of  his  colleagues, 
that  the  enemies  of  reform  would  find  themselves 
miserably  mistaken.  Rather  than  abandon  the  bill, 
he  assured  his  hearers,  Parliament  would  be  kept 
sitting  until  the  next  December  or  the  next  Decem- 
ber twelvemonths  if  necessary.  That  settled  the 


214  THE  REFORM  BILL   AGAIN 

opposition  for  the  moment.  Amendments  were 
still  proposed,  and  debates  still  went  on,  and  divi- 
sions were  taken  ;  but  the  Tories  began  to  see  at  last 
that  the  Government  were  thoroughly  in  earnest, 
and  that  the  country  was  behind  Lord  Grey  and 
Lord  John  Russell.  The  bill  was  carried  through 
its  various  stages,  and  the  last  division  on  the  mo- 
tion, that  the  bill  do  now  pass,  showed  three  hun- 
dred and  forty-five  votes  for  the  reform  measure, 
and  only  two  hundred  and  thirty-nine  against  it — a 
majority  of  one  hundred  and  six  in  favour  of  the  bill. 
Then  the  hopes  and  hearts  of  all  the  anti-reformers 
turned  to  the  House  of  Lords.  The  House  of  Lords 
had  then,  as  now,  a  large  Conservative  majority,  and 
had,  therefore,  the  power  of  upsetting  the  work  of 
the  Commons,  and  rejecting  the  Reform  Bill  alto- 
gether. There  are  two  checks  on  the  unlimited 
exercise  of  such  a  power  by  the  House  of  Lords; 
the  one  constitutional,  and  the  other  political  and 
moral.  The  constitutional  check  is  found  in  the 
fact  that  the  Sovereign  has  always  the  right,  on  the 
advice  of  his  Ministers,  to  create  as  many  new  peers 
as  he  thinks  fit.  If,  therefore,  there  should  be  in 
the  House  of  Lords  a  known  majority  of  peers,  say 
one  hundred  in  number,  against  reform,  the  King 
would  only  have  to  create  one  hundred  and  fifty 
new  peers  from  the  Liberal  ranks  in  time  to  carry 
the  reform  measure  through  all  its  stages.  Of 
course,  this  is  what  might  be  called  a  desperate 
remedy,  and  could  only  be  tried  as  a  last  resource. 
With  a  Sovereign  like  George  III.  it  never  could  be 
tried,  because  the  King  would  never  give  his  consent 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  21$ 

to  a  wholesale  creation  of  peers  for  such  a  purpose. 
In  any  case,  only  the  most  extreme  emergency  could 
induce  a  Liberal  Ministry  to  have  recourse  to  such  a 
constitutional  device.  It  was  one  of  the  many  de- 
vices which  may  be  called  into  existence  under  the 
British  Constitution,  and  which  yet  appear  to  be  in 
themselves  fantastically  unconstitutional  and  anom- 
alous. Therefore  the  Tories  felt  in  good  confidence 
that  Lord  Grey  would  not  advise  the  Sovereign  to 
take  so  unusual  and  extraordinary  a  step ;  and  that 
William  IV.,  no  matter  how  many  crowds  might 
have  called  him  the  Patriot  King,  would  never  adopt 
that  way  of  showing  his  patriotic  sentiment. 

The  other  check  on  the  power  of  the  House  of 
Lords  was  that  created  by  the  strength  of  popular 
feeling  out-of-doors.  If  the  majority  of  the  con- 
stituencies should  prove  themselves  so  determined 
on  reform  that  the  prolonged  resistance  of  the  peers 
might  risk  a  revolution,  then  it  was  almost  certain 
that  the  House  of  Lords  would  give  way  and  yield 
to  the  popular  will.  Such  a  result  has  always  come 
about  in  recent  years.  The  House  of  Lords  in  our 
times  may  be  relied  upon  never  to  resist  the  de- 
mands of  the  constituencies  so  far  as  to  lead  to 
a  crisis  which  might  end  in  the  overthrow  of  the 
hereditary  chamber  itself.  We  have  grown  used 
to  that  condition  of  things  lately  ;  and  curiously 
enough  the  fact  serves  as  an  argument  to  those  who 
are  in  favour  of  the  present  constitution  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  to  those  who  are  determinedly 
against  it.  The  advocates  of  the  House  of  Lords 
ask  the  country  what  serious  objection  there  can  be 


2l6  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

to  a  chamber  which,  at  the  most,  can  only  interpose 
delay  and  allow  fuller  time  for  calm  consideration ; 
and  they  point  to  the  fact  that  the  House  of  Lords 
have  never  driven  their  opposition  to  any  dangerous 
extent,  or  done  aught  to  provoke  revolutionary  de- 
mands. On  the  other  hand,  the  opponents  of  the 
House  of  Lords  ask  what  can  be  the  use  of  an  insti- 
tution which  does  not  any  longer  even  profess  to  be 
a  saviour  of  society ;  which  has  long  since  renounced 
every  pretence  at  a  mission  to  save  society  from 
society's  self;  and  is  always  ready  to  give  way  if 
society  only  makes  clamour  enough  to  be  accepted 
as  a  danger-signal. 

In  the  days  of  the  first  Reform  Bill,  however,  the 
resisting  power  of  the  House  of  Lords  to  any  popu- 
lar movement  had  not  been  thoroughly  tested ;  and 
the  Tories  in  general  were  of  good  hope  that  the 
Lords  would  hold  out,  that  the  King  would  hold 
out,  and  that  the  mob-orators  and  anarchists  would 
have  to  slink  back  into  the  state  of  obscurity  to 
which  it  had  pleased  Providence  to  call  them.  The 
Tory  peers  kept  up  for  a  while  their  show  of  a  reso- 
lute purpose.  On  October  3rd,  Lord  Grey  moved 
the  second  reading  of  the  Reform  Bill ;  Lord  Wharn- 
cliffe  moved  as  an  amendment  that  the  bill  be  read 
a  second  time  that  day  six  months,  a  motion  which 
amounted  to  the  rejection  of  the  measure.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  spoke,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
uncompromisingly  against  the  bill ;  Lord  Lyndhurst, 
one  of  the  greatest  lawyers  of  his  day,  opposed  it 
more  dexterously,  but  not  less  decidedly;  Lord 
Brougham  thundered  in  its  favour.  The  division 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  21 7 

was  taken  on  the  morning  of  October  8th ;  and  it  was 
announced  that  the  second  reading  was  defeated  by 
a  majority  of  forty-one.  The  House  of  Commons 
had  spent  a  whole  session  in  vain  over  the  passing 
of  the  Reform  Bill;  the  House  of  Lords  undid  the 
work  in  a  few  days.  Yet  the  majority  against  the 
measure  was  not,  after  all,  so  great  as  might  have 
been  expected,  and  some  of  the  peers  who  had  voted 
in  the  majority  must  have  felt  themselves  wondering, 
as  they  went  home  that  morning,  whether  they  had 
not  hastened,  rather  than  retarded,  the  movement 
of  reform. 

The  news  of  the  adverse  division  in  the  House  of 
Lords  created  a  passionate  sensation  all  over  the 
country.  Great  meetings  were  held  in  every  city 
and  town;  in  many  places  the  shops  were  closed 
and  mourning  bells  were  pealed  from  some  of  the 
churches.  One  of  the  most  popular  ideas  of  the  day 
was  the  suggested  expedient  that  a  run  should  be 
made  upon  the  Bank  of  England  for  gold,  with  the 
view  of  obstructing  the  whole  movement  of  com- 
merce, in  the  hope  that  thereby  the  Lords  might  be 
brought  to  their  senses;  and  a  run  for  gold  was 
actually  made,  which  at  one  time  created  much 
alarm.  In  the  streets  from  Charing  Cross  to  the 
Houses  of  Parliament  vast  crowds  assembled  every 
evening,  cheering  the  leaders  of  the  reform  move- 
ment, and  hissing  and  cursing  the  peers  or  com- 
moners who  had  opposed  the  bill. 

Clamorous  proposals  for  the  abolition  of  the 
House  of  Lords  became  popular  on  every  Radical 
platform  all  over  the  country ;  serious  riots  took  place 


218  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

at  Derby,  at  Nottingham,  and  at  Bristol ;  the  castles 
and  country  houses  of  Tory  noblemen  and  squires 
were  attacked,  seriously  damaged,  and  in  some  in- 
stances set  on  fire.  One  instance  of  this  form  of  riot 
is  worth  a  special  mention,  if  only  because  of  the 
curious  and  touching  poetic  associations  which  it 
brings  up  with  it.  The  house  of  Mr.  Musters,  near 
Nottingham,  was  set  on  fire.  Mr.  Musters  was  the 
husband  of  the  Mary  Chaworth  who  in  the  days  of 
our  fathers  and  grandfathers  was  dear  to  every  sen- 
timental heart  as  Lord  Byron's  first  love,  about 
whom  he  wrote  his  famous  poem,  "  The  Dream." 
When  the  house  was  set  on  fire,  Mrs.  Musters — 
Mary  Chaworth — fled  in  alarm  and  found  refuge  for 
a  while  in  one  of  the  gardens.  The  terror  and  the 
cold  night  air  proved  too  much  for  her,  and  she 
caught  an  attack  of  illness  which  ended  soon  after 
in  her  death. 

Many  of  the  reformers  were  even  impatient  of 
Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John  Russell  themselves.  An 
impression  got  abroad  somehow,  that  the  Govern- 
ment might  be  disposed  to  tamper  with  the  people 
by  yielding  so  far  to  the  House  of  Lords  as  to  con- 
sent to  a  postponement  of  the  Reform  Bill.  The 
bare  surmise  or  suspicion  was  enough  for  a  time 
to  bring  a  certain  amount  of  unpopularity  on  the 
heads  of  the  leading  Ministers.  In  truth,  the 
country  was  aflame  with  passion ;  and  a  rash  act 
or  two,  even  perhaps  a  rash  word  or  two,  on  either 
side  of  the  political  field,  might  have  brought  about 
a  tumult,  which  would  have  seemed  to  distant  eyes 
not  altogether  unlike  a  popular  revolution.  It  can 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  2ig 

never  be  known  for  certain  how  near  England  really 
did  come  at  that  crisis  to  a  genuine  revolutionary 
struggle.  Looking  back  upon  that  time,  with  only 
the  experience  of  more  recent  days  to  guide  our 
judgment,  it  is  easy  enough  to  tell  ourselves  com- 
placently that  nothing  serious  could  have  occurred ; 
that  the  English  are  a  steadfast  people,  little  like 
the  French  and  foreigners  generally,  and  not  in  the 
least  addicted  to  revolution;  and  that  everything 
would  have  worked  out  quietly  for  the  best. 

History  tells  us  that  the  English  people  have 
never  shown  themselves  afraid  to  risk  a  revolution 
when  there  seemed  no  other  means  of  removing  an 
intolerable  grievance  and  making  it  sure  that  na- 
tional justice  must  be  done.  The  more  we  study 
the  records  of  that  reform  time,  the  more  we  shall 
be  inclined  to  believe  that  England  was  brought 
very  near  indeed  to  revolution.  How  far  were  the 
more  influential  leaders  of  the  Liberal  party  aware 
of  the  threatening  danger,  and  what  thoughts  were 
passing  through  their  minds  as  to  the  preparations 
that  would  have  to  be  made  in  order  to  encounter 
it  ?  That,  of  course,  we  shall  never  fully  know. 
But  it  is  at  least  certain,  that  some  of  those  leaders 
must  have  found  their  minds  perplexed  by  the  doubt 
whether  the  King  would  yield  to,  or  would  resist, 
the  advice  of  the  Ministry  and  the  demands  of  the 
country;  and  if  he  should  decide  upon  resistance, 
what  was  to  happen  next  ?  Were  the  Liberal 
leaders  to  allow  things  to  drift  into  mere  tumult,  or 
were  they  not  to  take  some  steps  which  might  pro- 
vide for  the  guidance  of  the  people  and  secure  the 


22O  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

country  against  the  worst?  Suppose  the  King  were 
to  set  himself  doggedly  against  the  advice  of  his 
Ministers,  and  were  to  declare  that  he  would  throw 
in  his  own  fate,  and  that  of  his  dynasty,  with  the 
action  of  the  House  of  Lords ;  what  would  remain 
to  be  done  in  such  a  case  ? 

The  question  must  have  come  up  to  the  mind  of 
many  a  statesman  of  that  time — whether  in  such  a 
case  it  would  be  the  duty  of  the  great  Liberal 
nobles  of  England  to  side  with  the  King  against 
the  House  of  Commons  and  the  people,  or  to 
stand,  as  their  forefathers  did,  with  the  Parliament 
— that  is,  with  the  real  Parliament — and  against 
the  revolutionary  action  of  the  Crown.  The  di- 
lemma, says  a  recent  writer,  appeared  not  unlike 
that  which  was  presented  when  Charles  I.  broke 
away  from  his  Parliament ;  and  he  adds,  that  some 
at  least  of  the  influential  English  nobles  seemed  to 
have  been  inclined  to  cast  in  their  lot  with  the  Par- 
liament, and  against  the  Sovereign,  in  the  event  of 
the  Sovereign  proving  faithless  to  the  constitutional 
principles  by  virtue  of  which  alone  he  held  his 
Crown.  Such  a  condition  of  things  appears  almost 
incredible  to  us  now.  We  have  so  long  been  ac- 
customed to  the  steady  and  safe  working  of  the 
political  system  under  a  thoroughly  constitutional 
Sovereign,  that  we  find  it  hard  to  realise  the  possi- 
bility of  a  crisis  occurring  at  so  recent  a  date,  which 
would  have  rendered  it  necessary  for  great  English 
noblemen  to  make  up  their  minds  as  to  which  side 
was  that  of  revolution,  and  which  side  was  that  of 
the  Constitution.  But  it  is  quite  certain  that  such 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  221 

a  question  was  presented  for  decision  to  some  of  the 
great  Liberal  nobles. 

Suppose  the  country  were  to  be  thrown  into 
actual  domestic  strife  by  the  possible  action  of  the 
Sovereign,  that  action  being  a  breach  of  the  Con- 
stitution, on  which  side  were  the  defenders  of  law 
and  order  to  take  their  stand  ?  It  came  out,  during 
the  course  of  a  great  political  trial  some  sixteen 
years  afterwards,  that  a  correspondence  had  been 
opened,  undoubtedly  under  the  sanction  of  some  of 
the  great  reformers,  with  Sir  Charles  Napier,  the 
famous  soldier,  for  the  purpose  of  endeavouring  to 
secure  beforehand  the  co-operation  of  the  army, 
should  the  worst  come  to  the  worst.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  that  for  some  time  England  was 
trembling  on  the  very  verge  of  a  revolution. 

Parliament  was  called  together  again  on  Decem- 
ber 6,  1831.  The  King  opened  the  session  in  per- 
son, and  announced  in  his  Royal  Speech  that  bills 
would  be  introduced  for  the  reform  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  with  the  added  declaration  that  the 
speedy  and  satisfactory  settlement  of  this  question 
becomes  daily  of  more  pressing  importance  to  the 
security  of  the  State  and  the  contentment  and  the 
welfare  of  the  people.  It  was  possibly  thought  by 
the  leading  Ministers  that  this  emphatic  declaration 
might  have  the  effect  of  discouraging  the  leaders  of 
the  Opposition,  and  teaching  them  that  in  the  opin- 
ion of  the  King  himself  the  time  had  gone  by  for 
any  further  resistance  to  reform.  The  words,  how- 
ever, had  no  such  effect.  The  leaders  of  the  Tory 
party  were  convinced  in  their  hearts  that  the  King 


222  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

was  opposed  to  the  Ministerial  proposals  for  reform, 
and  that  he  was  only  waiting  for  an  opportunity  to 
throw  cold  water  upon  the  whole  agitation.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  reformers  out-of-doors  still  cherished 
the  opinion  that  the  King  was  in  favour  of  reform, 
and  that  he  was  prepared  to  go  to  any  constitutional 
length  which  the  advice  of  his  Ministers  could 
suggest. 

On  the  1 2th  of  December,  Lord  John  Russell 
moved  in  the  House  of  Commons  for  leave  to  bring 
in  his  third  Reform  Bill.  The  bill  was  in  all  im- 
portant details,  and  of  course  in  all  its  principles, 
much  the  same  as  the  first  and  second  bills.  The 
first  reading  passed  without  a  division;  and  when 
the  second  reading  came  on  there  were  three  hun- 
dred and  twenty-four  votes  for  the  bill,  and  one 
hundred  and  sixty-two  against  it ;  so  that  the  sup- 
porters of  the  measure  were  now  in  a  majority  of 
exactly  two  to  one  over  their  opponents.  Then 
Parliament  adjourned  for  the  Christmas  holidays. 
Part  of  the  sacred  and  gladsome  season  was  occu- 
pied in  the  trial  of  the  rioters  who  had  been  arrested 
for  creating  disturbances  throughout  the  country. 
Those  were  stern  times,  and  the  unfortunate  rioters 
received  in  many  cases  the  hardest  punishment  the 
law  could  inflict.  There  were  four  executions  of 
rioters  at  Bristol,  and  three  at  Nottingham.  Parlia- 
ment came  together  again  on  the  i/th  of  January, 
1832;  and  on  January  2Oth  the  House  of  Commons 
went  into  committee  on  the  Reform  Bill.  Then 
the  work  of  obstruction  came  on  with  fresh  vigour. 
The  bill  did  not  get  through  committee  until  March 


GENERAL   SIR   CHARLES   JAMES   NAPIER,    G.C.B. 
From  a  sketch  by  George  Jones,  R.A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  22$ 

I4th ;  and  it  passed  its  third  reading  by  a  majority 
of  one  hundred  and  sixteen,  on  the  23rd  of  the 
month.  It  was  sent  up  to  the  House  of  Lords  at 
once ;  and  then  two  popular  questions  at  once  arose 
which  have  been  echoed  and  re-echoed  often  since 
that  time. 

The  first  question  was,  What  will  the  House  of 
Lords  do  with  the  bill  ?  and  the  second  and  more 
ominous  question  was,  What  is  to  be  done  with  the 
House  of  Lords  ?  Now,  by  this  time,  there  had 
been  formed  amongst  the  peers  a  sort  of  third  party, 
who  became  popularly  known  as  the  "  Waverers," 
just  as  in  former  days  another  political  party  had 
been  known  by  the  name  of  the  "  Trimmers." 
The  Waverers  consisted  for  the  most  part,  if  not 
altogether,  of  men  who  were  opposed  to  the  Reform 
Bill,  and,  indeed,  to  all  comprehensive  schemes  of 
reform;  but  who,  nevertheless,  were  not  prepared 
to  push  their  conservatism  to  dangerous  lengths. 
These  men  were  for  staving  off  reforms  as  long  as 
they  could,  but  they  were  not  willing  to  run  the 
risk  of  a  social  convulsion  in  their  anxiety  to  defeat 
or  delay  the  Ministerial  measure.  They  saw  clearly 
enough  that  the  crisis  was  becoming  most  serious 
and  important ;  and  probably  their  uttermost  hopes 
at  this  stage  of  the  proceedings  were  limited  to  the 
possibility  of  reducing  the  Reform  Bill  to  what  they 
would  have  considered  a  comparatively  harmless 
measure. 

The  student  of  English  history  will  be  interested 
in  observing  the  fact  that  every  great  struggle  for 
political  reform  in  England  develops,  in  one  or  both 


224  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

Houses  of  Parliament,  a  third  party  which  contrives 
to  get  into  its  hands  for  the  time  the  balance  of 
power,  and  thus  becomes  master  of  the  situation. 
In  most  instances  the  third  party  is  formed  by 
Liberals  who  fall  away  from  their  leaders  on  some 
project  of  reform,  and  are  ready  to  give  their  votes 
and  their  help  to  the  anti-reform  Opposition.  In 
the  reform  movement  of  1831,  the  third  party  was 
composed  of  men  who,  being  anti-reformers  them- 
selves, were  yet  willing  to  use  the  power  they  had 
got  on  the  side  of  a  reform  measure,  rather  than 
run  the  risk  of  a  popular  uprising.  The  fact,  how- 
ever, remains  the  same ;  and  students  who  want  to 
get  at  a  thorough  understanding  of  our  modern 
history  must  take  account  of  it,  that  every  struggle 
between  political  progress  and  political  reaction  in 
England  calls  into  existence  a  third  party  who  con- 
trive for  the  hour  to  get  into  their  hands  the  key  of 
the  situation. 

To  the  Waverers,  therefore,  the  eyes  of  most 
people  turned  as  the  possessors  of  the  way  out  of 
the  deadlock.  It  was  quite  certain  that  if  Lord 
Grey  could  induce  the  King  to  give  his  consent  to 
the  creation  of  new  peers  in  sufficient  number,  the 
Waverers  would  never  think  of  putting  Sovereign 
or  Government  to  the  trouble  of  carrying  any  such 
measure  into  effect.  The  mere  announcement  that 
the  King  had  given  his  consent  would  be  enough 
for  them ;  and  they  would  at  once  withdraw  from 
further  opposition  to  the  Reform  Bill.  Of  what 
avail  would  it  be  for  the  Waverers  to  carry  their 
opposition  any  farther  ?  If  the  King  chose  to 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  22$ 

create  new  peers  out  of  the  Liberal  ranks  in  suffi- 
cient number  to  form  a  majority  for  the  passing  of 
the  bill,  what  could  the  Waverers  get  by  resistance  ? 
The  bill  would  be  carried  in  any  case;  and  they 
would  only  have  the  discomfort  and  the  humiliation 
of  seeing  their  hereditary  chamber  flooded  by  a  num- 
ber of  Liberals  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  who 
had  suddenly,  at  the  King's  order,  been  converted 
into  peers,  and  who  could  go  on  passing  further  and 
further  reforms  of  all  kinds  for  the  remainder  of 
their  natural  lives.  The  Waverers,  in  fact,  hoped 
that  by  standing  out  to  a  certain  extent  against 
the  bill  they  might  strengthen  the  King  in  his  sup- 
posed determination  not  to  create  new  peers ;  while 
the  King,  for  his  part,  was  still,  no  doubt,  under 
the  impression  that  the  Waverers  might  frighten  the 
Ministry  so  far  as  to  induce  them  to  leave  out  of 
their  measure  the  principles  which  the  King  thought 
harmful,  but  which  the  people  ardently  desired  to 
establish.  The  King,  therefore,  delayed  and  de- 
layed ;  and  Lord  Grey  could  not  obtain  any  promise 
from  him. 

The  bill  came  on  for  second  reading  in  the  House  of 
Lords  on  the  9th  of  April,  and  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton spoke  out  as  strongly  against  the  measure  as  he 
had  spoken  against  the  first  Reform  Bill  brought  in 
by  the  Government.  He  was,  however,  much  more 
indiscreet  in  this  speech  than  he  had  been  on  the 
former  occasion,  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  declare 
his  conviction  that  the  King  himself  was  not  in 
favour  of  any  such  measure  of  reform  as  his  Minis- 
ters were  endeavouring  to  force  upon  the  House  of 

VOL.  I.— 15 


226  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

Lords.  The  Duke,  indeed,  exceeded  himself  in  his 
indiscretion  on  this  occasion ;  for  he  declared  his 
full  belief  that,  if  the  King's  real  feelings  only  could 
be  made  known  to  the  country,  Lord  Grey  would 
never  have  the  -slightest  chance  of  passing  such  a 
measure  as  that  which  he  had  been  reckless  enough 
to  introduce  to  Parliament.  The  Waverers,  how- 
ever, were  not  altogether  satisfied  with  the  rash 
declarations  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  they 
supported  the  second  reading,  and  thus  enabled  the 
reading  to  be  carried  by  a  majority  of  nine.  Thus 
they  satisfied  their  purpose  and  their  policy  by 
enabling  the  Government  to  carry  their  measure 
another  stage;  while,  at  the  same  time,  making  it 
clear  to  the  Opposition  that  if  the  Government  re- 
fused to  give  way  on  some  material  points,  the  bill 
could  be  so  mutilated  by  the  help  of  the  Waverers 
as  to  make  it  utterly  unsatisfactory  to  the  country. 
Accordingly,  the  Waverers  gave  the  next  helping 
hand  to  the  Opposition.  Lord  Lyndhurst  proposed 
an  amendment,  which  the  Government  properly  de- 
clared to  be  hostile  to  the  conduct  of  the  bill;  and 
the  Waverers  supported  Lord  Lyndhurst,  and  his 
motion  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  thirty-five. 
Lord  Grey  at  once  addressed  himself  to  the  King, 
and  as  the  King  still  hesitated  about  granting  him 
the  power  to  make  new  peers,  Lord  Grey  instantly 
tendered  his  resignation.  The  resignation  was 
accepted ;  indeed,  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  but 
to  accept  it,  or  to  give  in  to  Lord  Grey's  demands. 
King  William  knew  well  that  when  Lord  Grey  had 
once  made  up  his  mind,  it  would  be  useless  for  even 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  22? 

the  Sovereign  to  attempt  any  argument  or  per- 
suasion with  him.  Lord  Grey  and  his  colleagues 
went  out  of  office;  and  the  King  was  left,  meta- 
phorically, face  to  face  with  the  country,  face  to 
face  with  the  possibility  of  revolution.  The  King 
sent  for  Lord  Lyndhurst,  and  pathetically,  per- 
plexedly, besought  for  help  and  counsel.  Lord 
Lyndhurst  had  only  one  piece  of  advice  to  give, — 
the  only  piece  of  advice  any  Tory  could  have  given 
under  the  circumstances, — and  that  was  to  send  for 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.  The  Duke  was  sent  for; 
and  the  King  implored  him  to  undertake  the  forma- 
tion and  the  leadership  of  a  new  Government. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  had  encountered  many 
terrible  risks  and  difficulties  in  his  time;  but  he  had 
never  encountered  any  risk  or  any  difficulty  when 
there  was  not  the  slightest  chance  of  any  good  pur- 
pose whatever  being  served  by  the  attempt.  He 
told  the  King  bluntly  that  he  did  not  believe  it 
would  be  possible  for  him  to  get  together  any 
Government  which  could  face  the  crisis;  and  in 
order  not  to  be  wanting  in  advice  of  some  kind,  he 
recommended  the  King  to  send  for  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
and  try  what  Peel  could  do.  Then,  and  for  ever 
after,  while  Peel's  life  lasted,  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton looked  up  to  Peel  with  a  genuine  and  a  generous 
admiration  as  the  man  who  could  do  anything,  if 
anything  was  possible  to  be  done.  So  the  King 
sent  for  Peel ;  but  Peel  saw  that  this  was  a  case  in 
which  he  could  do  nothing. 

Peel  was  one  of  the  most  rising  men  of  the  time. 
He  must  have  known  that  he  had  a  great  career  be- 


228  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

fore  him ;  and  he  was  quite  unselfish  and  patriotic 
enough  to  think  little  of  risking  that  career,  if  only 
thereby  something  could  be  done  to  serve  the  Sov- 
ereign and  the  State.  But  he  was  an  intensely 
practical  man,  and  he  did  not  see  that  either  Sover- 
eign or  State  could  be  served  by  his  simply  dashing 
his  head  against  a  stone  wall.  So  he  told  the  King 
that  it  would  be  utterly  impossible  for  him  to  keep 
together  a  Ministry  against  the  House  of  Commons 
and  against  the  country,  and  he  declined  to  attempt 
the  impossible  task.  Then  the  King  in  despair  sent 
for  the  Duke  of  Wellington  again  and  made  it  some- 
thing like  a  point  of  duty  and  of  loyalty  with  him 
to  help  the  Sovereign  out  of  his  dilemma.  The 
Duke,  who  never  was,  and  never  could  be,  a  poli- 
tician, was  willing  after  such  an  appeal  to  dash  his 
head  against  the  stone  wall,  and  so  he  did  actually 
attempt  to  get  together  an  Administration  composed 
of  men  who  would  stand  up  with  him  as  opponents 
of  reform,  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  country. 
The  attempt  utterly  failed.  Indeed,  to  say  that  it 
failed  is  to  give  an  inadequate  idea  of  its  futility. 
No  sooner  was  it  made  than  it  had  to  be  abandoned. 
There  were  no  men  outside  Bedlam  who  would 
undertake  to  co-operate  in  such  a  task. 

What  was  the  poor  bewildered  King  to  do  ?  He 
could  think  of  nothing,  and  nothing  could  be  sug- 
gested to  him  but  to  send  for  Lord  Grey  again,  and 
request  Lord  Grey  to  reconstruct  his  Ministry  and 
go  on  with  the  Reform  Bill.  While  all  this  was 
happening  the  public  mind  was  growing  more  and 
more  furious  and  the  popularity  of  the  Patriot  King 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  2 29 

had  entirely  gone  under.  William  was  now  de- 
nounced every  day  and  every  night  in  the  streets  of 
London,  and  through  all  the  great  towns  of  Eng- 
land, Ireland,  and  Scotland.  When  his  carriage 
was  seen  in  the  West-End  streets  of  London,  it  be- 
came instantly  surrounded  by  hooting,  hissing,  fist- 
shaking  mobs.  Indeed,  the  poor  Sovereign  had  to 
be  most  carefully  guarded  in  order  to  secure  him 
against  the  possibility  of  some  direct  personal 
attack. 

Now  King  William  was  a  brave  man  and  an  hon- 
est man ;  and  we  may  be  sure  that  he  did  not  take 
any  account  of  the  personal  danger;  but  he  had  en- 
joyed the  popularity  which  came  around  him  of  late 
years,  and  it  pained  him  to  find  himself  an  object 
of  distrust  and  dislike  to  so  large  a  proportion  of  his 
subjects.  What  course  but  one  was  left  for  him  to 
pursue  ?  He  had  no  taste  for  the  stirring  up  of  a 
popular  revolution ;  and  amongst  those  to  whom  he 
looked  for  advice  he  found  no  trustworthy  person 
who  could  counsel  him  to  any  such  purpose.  Well- 
ington, Lyndhurst,  Peel,  could  not  help  him  out  of 
his  difficulty ;  he  had  to  go  back  to  Lord  Grey,  and 
Lord  Grey  was  inexorable. 

Nothing  was  to  be  done  unless  William  would 
give  his  consent  to  the  creation  of  new  peers.  Lord 
Brougham,  who  accompanied  Lord  Grey  in  one 
momentous  interview  with  the  Sovereign,  went  so 
far  as  to  insist  that  the  consent  must  even  be  given 
in  writing.  The  poor  King  had  no  other  course 
open  to  him  than  to  yield  to  stern  necessity.  He 
had  argued  with  the  inexorable  long  enough ;  and 


230  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

he  was  thoroughly  tired  of  the  futile  argument. 
He  gave  his  consent,  and  he  gave  it  even  in  writing. 
"  The  King  grants  permission  to  Lord  Grey  and  to 
his  Chancellor,  Lord  Brougham,  to  create  such  a 
number  of  peers  as  will  insure  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Bill,"  were  the  words  of  the  consent  writ- 
ten on  the  paper  which  the  King,  at  last  submis- 
sive, handed  to  the  rigorous  and  uncourtly  Lord 
Brougham. 

Of  course,  the  moment  the  consent  was  given  the 
crisis  was  all  over.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the 
new  peers  were  never  created.  It  was  enough  for 
the  Opposition  to  know  that  the  new  peers  would  be 
created  if  necessary,  and  there  was  an  end  of  their 
resistance  at  once.  They  did  not  want  the  Reform 
Bill,  and  they  did  not  want  the  new  peers;  but, 
above  all  things,  they  did  not  want  the  Reform  Bill 
and  the  new  peers  together.  The  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton and  some  other  peers  withdrew  from  the  House 
of  Lords  altogether  while  the  bill  was  running  its 
now  short  and  summary  course.  They  would  not 
look  upon  the  consummation  of  a  policy  which  it 
was  not  possible  for  them  any  longer  to  retard. 
The  Waverers  gave  way  and  the  fight  was  over. 
On  the  4th  of  June  the  bill  passed  through  the 
House  of  Lords;  and  a  few  days  after,  the  poor 
Patriot  King  had  given  it  his  Royal  Assent. 

Let  us  see  now  what  were  the  two  great  preced- 
ents, the  two  great  principles,  which  were  estab- 
lished by  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and  by  the 
manner  in  which  it  passed  into  law.  We  have 
already  told  our  readers  what  the  bill  itself  did  for 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  23! 

the  country ;  we  have  described  the  general  reforms 
which  it  created  ;  and  we  have  shown  in  what  meas- 
ure it  was  seriously  defective,  and  why  it  became 
necessary  that  many  further  expansions  of  its  scope 
should  be  brought  about.  But  the  great  principles 
accomplished  by  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill  are 
not  to  be  found  embodied  in  the  contents  of  the 
bill  itself. 

The  most  important  constitutional  principles 
established  for  the  first  time,  and  we  trust  for  all 
time,  by  the  triumph  of  Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John 
Russell  are  two  in  number.  The  first  is,  that  the 
House  of  Lords  must  never  carry  resistance  to  any 
measure  coming  from  the  House  of  Commons,  that 
is,  from  the  chamber  which  represents  the  country, 
beyond  the  point  at  which  it  becomes  evident  that 
the  House  of  Commons  is  in  earnest,  and  that  the 
country  is  behind  it.  It  is  now  settled  that  the 
House  of  Lords  shall  have  no  greater  power  of  re- 
sistance to  a  popular  measure  than  that  which,  in  a 
different  form,  is  given  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  the  power  to  delay  its  passing  until 
the  House  of  Commons  shall  have  had  full  time  to 
reconsider  its  decision  and  say,  on  that  reconsidera- 
tion, whether  it  is  of  the  same  mind  as  before,  or 
not.  Many  English  reformers  think  that  even  this 
degree  of  power  is  far  too  much  to  be  given  to  the 
House  of  Lords  as  at  present  constituted ;  but  it  is 
not  necessary  to  enter  into  that  question.  It  is 
enough  to  say,  that  since  the  passing  of  the  Reform 
Bill  the  House  of  Lords  has  never,  for  any  con- 
siderable length  of  time,  put  itself  in  direct  antagon- 


232  THE  REFORM  BILL   AGAIN 

ism  to  the  House  of  Commons.  The  second  great 
principle  which  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill  es- 
tablished is,  that  the  Sovereign  of  England  must 
give  way  to  the  advice  of  his  Ministers  on  any 
question  of  vital  import  to  the  State,  and  that  the 
personal  authority  of  the  Monarch  is  no  longer  to 
decide  the  course  of  the  Government.  Never,  since 
that  time,  has  the  personal  will  of  the  Sovereign 
been  exercised  as  a  decisive  force  to  contradict  and 
counteract  the  resolve  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
The  country  is  happy,  indeed,  which  has  seen  so 
beneficent  a  change  accomplished,  and  to  all  ap- 
pearance safely  accomplished  for  ever,  without  the 
need  of  recourse  to  revolution. 

It  might  have  been  worth  a  revolution  to  effect 
such  a  change,  if  it  could  be  accomplished  by  no 
other  means.  For  the  peaceful  results  we  must 
thank  the  people  of  these  countries,  we  must  thank 
the  patriotic  Ministers  like  Lord  Grey  and  Lord 
John  Russell,  we  must  thank  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  let  it  be  added  that  some  thanks  are 
also  due  to  the  King,  who  had  the  manhood  not  to 
be  afraid  of  submitting  his  personal  feelings  and 
wishes  to  the  better  judgment  of  his  Ministers  and 
to  the  welfare  of  the  country.  Looking  back  com- 
posedly, at  this  distance  of  time,  and  after  the  ex- 
perience of  many  succeeding  Reform  Bills,  it  seems 
surprising  to  most  of  us  that  the  Conservative  party 
did  not  better  understand  the  real  strength  of  the 
movement  which  they  were  striving  to  resist.  It 
seems  hard  to  comprehend  how  they  could  have 
looked  at  the  condition  of  things  which  prevailed 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  233 

just  before  the  Reform  Bill  was  introduced,  the 
parliamentary  representation  of  empty  spaces,  the 
right  of  the  landowner  and  the  close  corporation  to 
nominate  anybody  to  the  House  of  Commons  whom 
the  landlord  or  the  close  corporation  thought  fit  to 
honour  with  patronage,  the  close  boroughs,  the 
rotten  boroughs,  the  open  and  unabashed  system  of 
bribery  and  corruption,  the  seats  bought  and  sold 
like  goods  at  an  auction — it  seems  nard  to  compre- 
hend how  any  intelligent  Conservative  could  have 
looked  at  things  as  they  were  and  not  have  seen  for 
himself  that  such  things  could  not  possibly  last. 

There  were  intelligent  Conservatives  in  those 
days,  as  in  all  days.  The  Conservative  party  had 
men  of  intellect,  men  even  of  genius,  among  their 
leading  members.  They  had  Peel,  they  had  Lynd- 
hurst,  they  had  many  other  men  who  might  have 
been  capable  of  guiding  a  party  aright  at  such  a 
crisis;  they  had  before  them  the  example  of  the 
United  States,  where  the  colonies  achieved  their 
independence  after  a  tremendous  struggle  rather 
than  endure  a  system  of  government  without  ade- 
quate representation;  they  had  seen  the  historic 
monarchy  of  France  overturned,  because  the  people 
would  no  longer  submit  to  be  governed  by  the  will 
of  the  Sovereign ;  they  had  only  just  seen  how  an- 
other monarchy,  set  up  in  France  by  the  combined 
strength  of  all  the  great  European  Powers,  had  been 
upset  because  the  people  found  no  proper  represent- 
ation in  the  political  system.  They  might  have 
known  that  the  people  of  these  countries  are  not 
patient  to  servility,  and  that  the  days  of  personal 


234  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

government — government  by  the  caprice  of  the 
Sovereign — were  gone  for  ever.  They  might  even 
have  observed  that  the  Reform  Bill,  brought  in  by 
Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John  Russell,  did  not  by  any 
means  satisfy  the  desires  of  the  most  earnest  re- 
formers outside  and  inside  Parliament.  They  might 
have  seen  that  the  Reform  Bill  as  it  stood  was  only 
possible  because  so  many  influential  reform  leaders 
were  willing  to  come  to  terms  of  compromise  with 
Lord  Grey,  and  to  accept  half  a  loaf  because  it  was 
better  than  no  bread.  Under  such  conditions  it  may 
well  seem  surprising  to  us  now,  that  the  Conserva- 
tives should  not  have  seen  the  palpable  fact  that  re- 
form of  some  kind  must  come,  and  that  Lord  Grey's 
scheme  was  the  most  moderate  which  the  country 
could  possibly  accept.  But  the  impression  of  the 
Conservatives  up  to  the  last  moment  seems  to  have 
been  that,  if  only  they  could  defeat  Lord  Grey  and 
his  Reform  Bill,  the  whole  question  would  be  set- 
tled, and  that  nothing  more  would  be  heard  of  re- 
form for  many  generations  to  come.  On  the  whole, 
these  countries  have  no  reason  to  regret  that  the 
Tories  fought  out  their  battle  to  the  end ;  and  that 
they  brought  the  King  face  to  face  with  the  ques- 
tion, whether  to  submit  his  personal  will  or  to  risk 
a  revolution.  If  they  had  compromised  with  Lord 
Grey,  the  principle  of  government  by  the  will  of  the 
Sovereign  might  have  dragged  on  for  a  few  years 
more,  and  the  battle  might  have  been  fought  under 
leaders  less  capable  than  Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John 
Russell. 

The  name  of  Lord  John  Russell  reminds  us  that 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN  235 

in  one  of  the  closing  debates  on  the  Reform  Bill  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  Russell  made  use  of  a  par- 
ticular phrase  which  was  afterwards  brought  up 
against  him  many  times.  The  more  extreme  re- 
formers found  fault  with  the  phrase  because  they 
thought  it  showed,  on  Russell's  part,  a  lack  of 
earnestness  in  the  cause  of  reform — indeed,  a  lack  of 
true  understanding  as  to  the  meaning  of  reform ; 
while  the  anti-reformers  used  it  as  an  argument  to 
prove  that  the  Government  had  pledged  the  Liberal 
party  to  be  content  with  the  way  it  had  already 
made,  and  to  seek  no  further  progress.  Lord  John 
Russell  said  that,  "  so  far  as  Ministers  were  con- 
cerned, the  Reform  Bill  was,  in  his  opinion,  a  final 
measure."  It  was  at  once  assumed  by  the  extreme 
men  on  both  sides,  that  Lord  John  Russell,  on  the 
part  of  the  Government,  meant  to  declare  that 
enough  had  been  done  in  the  way  of  reform,  that 
the  country  had  had  all  the  reform  it  wanted  or 
could  get ;  that  no  further  steps  were  to  be  taken 
in  any  similar  direction,  and  that  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832  was  final. 

Lord  John  Russell  undoubtedly  gave  a  good 
chance,  by  his  phrase,  to  those  on  the  one  side  who 
thought  his  Reform  Bill  inadequate,  and  to  those 
on  the  other  side  who  thought  that  the  most  limited 
scheme  of  reform  would  be  far  too  much.  We  all 
understand  now  quite  well  what  Lord  John  Russell 
meant ;  although  it  certainly  would  have  been  better 
if  he  had  made  his  meaning  more  clear  at  the  time. 
Most  assuredly  it  never  entered  into  a  mind  like  that 
of  Lord  John  Russell  to  believe  that  the  Reform 


236  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

Bill  which  he  and  his  colleagues  had  carried  would 
satisfy  the  growing  political  wants  of  the  people  of 
England  for  all  time.  A  man  like  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell must  have  known  very  well — Lord  John  Russell, 
of  course,  did  know  very  well — that  the  £50  fran- 
chise in  counties  and  the  ;£io  franchise  in  boroughs 
could  not  satisfy  the  needs  of  an  ever-growing 
population.  No  man  of  Russell's  intellect  could 
have  supposed  for  a  moment  that  the  whole  work- 
ing population  of  England  could  be  content  to  re- 
main for  ever  without  that  political  franchise  which 
was  already  given  to  the  people  of  France  and  the 
people  of  the  American  Republic.  What  Russell 
meant  clearly  was  that  the  Government  had  com- 
pleted for  the  present  their  chapter  of  reform.  No 
man  knew  better  than  Lord  John  Russell  did,  that 
the  people  of  these  countries  are  not  likely  to  de- 
vote all  their  days  to  political  agitation ;  and  that 
when  they  have  accomplished  one  triumph  in  the 
way  of  reform,  they  will  be  found  ready  to  return 
to  their  ordinary  pursuits,  and  to  wait  until  some 
new  exigency  brings  about  the  necessity  of  accom- 
plishing another  work  of  the  same  kind.  Russell, 
in  fact,  continued,  during  all  the  rest  of  his  long 
political  career,  to  be  as  earnest  an  advocate  of  re- 
form as  he  had  proved  himself  to  be  when  for  the 
first  time  he  introduced  his  Reform  Bill — for  it  may 
well  be  called  his — to  the  House  of  Commons.  His 
name  was  identified  with  many  another  project  of 
reform,  with  reform  schemes  launched  by  him  in 
later  days,  and  carried  to  success  by  him  or  by 
others  who  acted  on  his  inspiration.  But  he  spoke 


THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

the  words  of  plain  common-sense  when  he  said  that 
the  Government  of  Lord  Grey  believed  they  had 
done  their  work  for  the  time  in  carrying  their  Re- 
form Bill,  and  were  free,  if  they  thought  well,  to 
stand  aside  and  leave  future  work  to  future  hands. 

The  close  of  the  great  debates  on  the  Reform  Bill 
may  be  regarded  also  as,  in  one  sense,  the  close  of 
a  great  career.  Here  Charles,  Earl  Grey,  to  quote 
the  words  of  Carlyle  applied  to  Mirabeau,  "  drops 
from  the  tissue  of  our  history,  not  without  a  tragic 
farewell."  Lord  Grey  had  a  special  work  appointed 
for  him  to  do;  and  he  did  it,  patiently,  persever- 
ingly,  and  with  success.  From  the  distant  days 
when  he  had  presented  the  petition  of  "  the  friends 
of  the  people  "  to  the  House  of  Commons, — from 
those  days,  and  indeed  from  days  long  before,  Lord 
Grey  had  been  a  steady  and  devoted  friend  of  re- 
form. He  had  followed  the  guidance  of  Fox,  al- 
though he  had  little  of  Fox's  enthusiasm  or  of  that 
gleam  of  the  poetic  and  the  romantic  which  inspired 
so  much  of  Fox's  eloquence.  Lord  Grey  was  by 
descent,  by  position,  and  by  temperament  an  aris- 
tocrat of  the  aristocrats;  and  it  would  not  have 
been  under  ordinary  circumstances  natural  for  him 
to  concern  himself  much  about  securing  the  fran- 
chise for  a  class  of  men  with  whom,  in  most  cases, 
he  could  have  little  or  nothing  in  common.  A 
political  rival  of  Mirabeau  once  said  that  Mirabeau 
owed  much  of  his  success  to  his  "  terrible  gift  of 
familiarity,"  his  power  of  entering  into  the  ways 
and  feelings  and  common  talk  of  men  of  the  hum- 
blest class.  Grey  had  none  of  that  terrible  gift  of 


238  THE  REFORM  BILL  AGAIN 

familiarity ;  he  could  not  talk  to  people  in  general ; 
he  was  cold  and  austere  among  men  even  of  his 
own  class;  he  was  sometimes  almost  tongue-tied 
when  he  had  to  deal  with  unlettered  strangers.  It 
stands  all  the  more  to  his  honour  that  he  fought  the 
great  reform  battle  so  chivalrously,  that  he  ordered 
his  brave  soul  to  face  the  struggle,  and  that  he  faced 
it  until  success  came  in  the  end.  Lord  Grey  was 
the  last  English  Minister  who  had  served  on  any- 
thing like  terms  of  equality  with  such  men  as  Pitt, 
and  Fox,  and  Burke,  and  Sheridan.  Macaulay  says 
well  of  him  that  "  those  who  had  listened  to  his 
stately  eloquence  in  the  House  of  Lords  could  all 
the  better  understand  what  that  group  of  men  must 
have  been  among  whom  he  was  not  the  foremost." 


CHAPTER   XI 

SLAVERY — BLACK  AND   WHITE 

THE  first  great  work  done  by  the  reformed  Par- 
liament was  the  total  abolition  of  slavery  in 
the  West  Indian  and  other  colonies  of  England. 
The  new  Parliament,  indeed,  showed  itself  very 
eager  for  the  work  of  reform  in  any  and  every 
direction,  and  we  shall  presently  see  with  what 
energy  and  success  it  applied  itself  to  its  very  vari- 
ous tasks.  If  anything  were  needed  to  prove  that 
a  great  modern  nation  makes  progress  in  proportion 
to  the  genuineness  of  its  representative  system, 
such  proof  would  be  amply  furnished  by  the  history 
of  the  first  reformed  Parliament.  The  reform  in 
the  representative  system  had  not,  indeed,  gone 
nearly  as  far  as  was  needed  or  as  it  was  destined  be- 
fore very  long  to  go ;  but  it  had  gone  far  enough  to 
make  k  certain  that  a  Parliament  which  is  brought 
directly  in  touch  with  public  opinion  is  able  to  do 
great  work,  even  under  reluctant  or  lukewarm  sover- 
eigns. 

The  new  Parliament  applied  itself  at  this  very 
period  of  its  history  to  the  abolition  of  the  odious 
slavery  system  which  still  prevailed  in  many  of  the 

239 


240  SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

English  Colonies.  The  slave-trade  system  had  been 
put  down  long  before;  that  is,  so  far  as  English 
influence  and  the  strength  of  English  navies  could 
put  it  down.  Even  at  the  present  day  the  slave 
trade  lingers  here  and  there,  and  shows  itself  by  fits 
and  starts,  although  all  the  civilised  nations  of  the 
world  are  now  in  arms  against  it.  England  had  at 
one  time,  it  must  be  owned,  been  herself  a  sad 
offender  in  the  toleration  and  the  actual  practice  of 
the  slave  trade.  But  better  times  had  come,  and 
England  had  repented  of  her  former  error,  and  had 
done  her  very  best  to  suppress  the  unnatural  traffic. 
Still  it  was  quite  a  different  task  to  attempt  the 
abolition  of  the  system  of  domestic  slavery  in  colo- 
nies where  that  system  had  existed  from  time  im- 
memorial. England  took  over  her  colonies  burdened 
with  the  slavery  system;  and  had  not,  it  must  be 
said,  concerned  herself  very  much  with  any  persist- 
ent efforts  to  get  rid  of  the  odious  institution. 

There  had,  indeed,  been  for  a  long  time  growing 
up  in  England  a  party  of  philanthropic  reformers, 
whose  main  purpose  was  to  relieve  the  English 
Colonies  from  the  shame  and  the  sin  of  slavery. 
Brougham  was  one  of  the  most  eloquent  and  ener- 
getic of  the  men  whose  voice  had  always  denounced 
the  slave  system.  It  was  he  who,  in  energetic  and 
memorable  words,  cried  out  against  "  the  wild  and 
guilty  fantasy  that  man  can  hold  property  in  man." 
Zachary  Macaulay,  the  father  of  the  famous  historian, 
had  taken  a  most  active  and  enlightened  part  in  the 
movement  for  the  suppression  of  the  slave  system. 
He  had  himself  given  practical  evidence  of  his  sin- 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  241 

cerity,  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  accumulated  an 
immense  amount  of  knowledge  which  he  put  at  the 
service  of  those  who  were  endeavouring  to  arouse 
public  opinion  on  this  subject.  Zachary  Macaulay 
had  had  in  his  hands  the  management  of  a  vast 
West  Indian  estate  which  was  worked  by  slave 
labour.  He  resigned  that  lucrative  position  because 
his  conscience  would  not  allow  him  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  system,  which  with  his  own 
eyes  he  had  seen  to  be  productive  of  so  much  crime 
and  misery.  William  Wilberforce  had  identified  his 
name  and  the  name  of  his  family  with  the  Abolition 
movement.  Another  family  of  great  note,  the 
Powell  Buxtons,  had  for  a  long  time  before  and  a 
long  time  after,  been  the  enemies  of  slavery  in 
whatever  form.  Samuel  Whitbread  was  devoted  to 
the  same  cause ;  not  a  great  many  years  have  passed 
since  his  descendant,  another  Samuel  Whitbread, 
aroused  the  House  of  Commons  by  his  generous 
denunciation  of  certain  practices  which  an  English 
Government  had  thoughtlessly  tolerated — practices 
which  seemed  to  sanction  the  restoration  of  the 
fugitive  slave  to  those  who  claimed  to  be  his  owners. 
Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John  Russell  were  naturally  to 
be  found  among  the  earliest  opponents  of  slavery ; 
and  it  had  no  opponent  more  earnest  than  Daniel 
O'Connell,  the  leader  of  the  Irish  people. 

The  first  great  difficulty  was  to  get  up  a  strong, 
healthy  public  opinion  on  the  subject  of  slavery. 
Anyone  can  imagine,  without  too  much  racking  of 
his  brain,  the  kind  of  argument  which  would  be  ap- 
plied by  those  who  supported  the  system.  It  used 

VOL.  i.— 16 


242  SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

to  be  said,  for  example,  that  England  had  no  right 
to  rob  certain  of  her  colonies  of  an  institution  which 
was  absolutely  essential  to  the  prosperity  of  the 
colonies  themselves.  Without  slave  labour,  it  used 
to  be  declared,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
colonies  to  be  prosperous,  because  without  it  they 
could  not  hold  their  own  against  other  places  which 
permitted  and  encouraged  the  use  of  slave  labour. 
Many  even  argued  for  the  system  in  the  interest  of 
the  slaves  themselves.  "  Who,"  it  was  asked  in- 
cessantly, "  is  to  feed  and  clothe  these  poor  creat- 
ures, if  we  remove  them  from  the  protection  of 
their  masters,  who  could  only  benefit  by  their  labour 
under  the  existence  of  a  slave  system  ?"  "  How 
would  it  be  possible,"  it  was  asked  triumphantly, 
"  for  Europeans  to  toil  in  the  sweltering  tropical 
rice-fields  and  cotton-fields  ?  " 

Then,  again,  it  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  ac- 
counts of  cruelties  practised  on  the  negroes  were 
indignantly  denied.  The  masters  were  kindness 
itself  to  them — such  was  the  voluble  assertion ;  even 
if  they  had  not  been  influenced  by  Christian  feeling 
and  sentimental  humanity,  a  merely  selfish  care  for 
their  own  interests  would  keep  them  from  over- 
tasking and  punishing  their  poor  slaves.  All  the 
talk  about  floggings  and  brandings;  about  the 
separation  of  parents  from  children ;  about  women 
and  girls  treated  like  beasts  of  the  field  and  scourged 
to  their  death ;  about  runaway  slaves  being  identi- 
fied when  captured  because  of  the  owner's  brands 
upon  their  breasts — all  these  were  idle  tales,  utter 
exaggerations  such  as  only  the  fanatical  fancy  of  an 


WILLIAM    WILBERFORCE,    M.P. 
From  a  picture  by  J.  Rising. 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  243 

Abolitionist  could  suggest.  In  truth  the  English 
public  had  got  into  an  easy,  jog-trot  way  of  dealing 
in  its  mind  and  in  its  conscience  with  this  question 
of  domestic  slavery.  Numbers  of  the  best  and  most 
respectable  families  of  the  country  were  known  to 
have  large  possessions  in  the  West  Indies,  and  was 
it  to  be  supposed  that  such  men  would  tolerate  for 
a  moment  a  system  which  was  fraught  with  such 
terrible  consequences  ? 

Then,  again,  a  very  taking  argument  was  found 
by  those  who  insisted  that  the  workers  on  the  West 
Indian  plantations  were  for  the  most  part  better  fed 
and  cared  for  than  the  white  slaves  who  drudged  in 
an  English  factory  or  risked  their  lives  in  an  English 
mine.  This  argument  was  especially  telling  because 
undoubtedly  it  had  a  certain  amount  of  truth  in  it ; 
and  the  reformed  Parliament  had  not  yet  seriously 
turned  its  attention  to  the  condition  of  women  and 
children  in  our  factories  and  mines.  As  to  the  argu- 
ments drawn  from  the  alleged  humanity  of  the 
system,  Zachary  Macaulay  and  other  experienced 
men  supplied  their  friends  with  facts  and  dates  and 
cases,  which  no  sophistry  could  refute,  to  prove  that 
the  whole  system  was  interwoven  with  cruelty  and 
brutality  of  the  most  abominable  kind.  The  public 
advertisements  printed  in  colonial  papers  concerning 
escaped  slaves  would  have  supplied  proof  enough  of 
this,  in  the  means  of  identification  which  were  given, 
— the  backs  marked  with  stripes,  the  breasts  stamped 
with  the  burnt-in  brand  of  the  owner. 

How  did  it  come  about  that  English  families  of 
honoured  name  had  great  possessions  in  the  colonies 


244  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

where  slavery  prevailed,  and  tolerated  the  existence 
of  such  evils  ?  The  answer  was  easy  enough.  Not 
many  of  the  heads  of  those  great  families  were  at 
the  pains  of  visiting  their  colonial  estates  and  thor- 
oughly investigating  the  system  for  themselves. 
They  found  the  slavery  institution  going  on,  and  it 
did  not  occur  to  most  of  them  that  they  were  born 
to  set  it  right.  Most  of  them,  even  of  those  who 
actually  went  out  and  inspected  their  own  estates, 
were  willing  to  accept  the  reports  of  the  managers 
and  overseers,  whom  they  trusted,  and  did  not  take 
great  trouble  to  discover  what  could  very  easily  be 
concealed  from  their  sight.  Then,  again,  some  of 
the  owners  of  great  estates  did  pay  earnest  attention 
to  the  condition  of  the  slaves  and  did  take  care  that 
so  far  as  their  own  property  went  the  negro  worker 
should  be  fairly  and  kindly  treated.  But  even  to 
those  men  it  was  seldom  borne  in  with  any  force  of 
conviction  that  the  system  of  slavery  was  a  barbarous 
one  in  itself,  and  that  merely  to  make  the  slave  tol- 
erably comfortable  did  not  by  any  means  dispose  of 
even  the  principal  objection  to  the  odious  system. 

It  had  not  yet  got  clearly  into  the  public  mind 
that  man's  right  to  own  his  fellow-man  was,  as 
Brougham  said,  "  a  wild  and  guilty  fantasy." 
Therefore  the  pioneers  in  the  Abolition  movement 
had  to  set  to  work  in  the  first  instance  to  arouse  the 
national  conscience  and  to  create  a  public  opinion 
capable  of  supporting  them  in  their  noble  and  phil- 
anthropic efforts.  But  it  was  clear  that  with  a  non- 
reformed — that  is  to  say,  a  non-representative — 
Parliament  no  strength  of  public  opinion  could  have 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  245 

influence  enough  to  carry  the  abolition  of  slavery. 
What  did  the  unreformed  Parliament  care  about  the 
eloquence  of  Brougham,  or  Zachary  Macaulay's 
array  of  facts  and  evidence,  or  the  pleadings  of 
Fowell  Buxton  and  Wilberforce  and  Whitbread  ? 
The  House  of  Commons  of  that  day  was  not  respons- 
ible to  the  English  public.  It  was  responsible  only 
to  the  owners  of  the  constituencies  which  held  an 
overpowering  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
At  one  time  the  peers  who  sat  in  the  House  of 
Lords  had,  as  owners  of  the  soil  in  this  place  and 
that,  a  direct  control  over  a  large  number  of  votes 
in  what  was  ordinarily  called  the  Representative 
Chamber.  On  such  questions  as  that  of  slavery  and 
its  abolition  most  of  the  landowners  held  firmly  to- 
gether. An  interference  with  the  rights  of  those 
who  owned  property  in  the  West  Indies  might  be- 
come but  a  precedent  for  an  interference  with  the 
rights  of  those  who  held  property  in  England ;  and 
the  right  of  property  seemed  in  the  minds  of  many 
at  that  time  to  be  something  so  sacred  that  no  in- 
quiry as  to  its  operation,  its  origin,  its  justice,  or  its 
divinely  appointed  mission  could  be  allowed  with- 
out dread  of  the  vengeance  of  Heaven. 

Then,  again,  there  were  difficulties  of  another  kind. 
Some  of  the  West  Indian  Colonies,  and  also  places 
like  Demerara,  were  governed  directly  from  West- 
minster, and  were,  in  fact,  what  are  called  Crown 
Colonies ;  but  some,  like  Jamaica,  for  instance,  and 
other  West  Indian  islands,  had  a  sort  of  representa- 
tive system  of  their  own  and  a  kind  of  local  Parlia- 
ment which  managed  their  affairs.  Now  it  was 


246  SLAVERY-+-BLACK  AND    WHITE 

easy  to  imagine,  and  the  imagination  was  only  too 
well  justified  by  the  facts,  that  the  colonies  which 
had  any  manner  of  local  government  would  wax 
highly  indignant  at  the  thought  of  their  representa- 
tive system  being  interfered  with  by  the  meddling 
of  philanthropists  in  the  English  House  of  Com- 
mons. Some  of  the  strongest  opponents  of  all  re- 
presentative systems  in  England  were  among  the 
most  eager  to  seize  upon  this  form  of  argument  and 
brandish  it  as  their  own  in  the  faces  of  their  philan- 
thropic opponents.  "  Where  is  your  consistency?" 
it  was  pertinaciously  asked,  sometimes  in  tones  of 
mere  anger,  sometimes  in  tones  of  sarcasm.  "  You 
call  yourselves  Whigs  and  you  are  for  ever  clamour- 
ing about  the  independence  of  Parliament,  and  yet 
you  want  to  take  away  from  the  parliamentary 
Assembly  of  Jamaica  or  of  Barbadoes  the  right  to 
manage  its  own  affairs." 

The  Government  made  some  efforts  to  compromise 
with  some  of  the  colonies  by  issuing  ordinances 
which  endeavoured  to  mitigate  the  severity  of  the 
slave  system  on  the  plantations.  The  Jamaica  As- 
sembly refused  to  accept  the  recommendations  or 
orders  of  the  Colonial  Office  and  tried  to  mend  the 
matter  by  passing  an  act  to  mitigate  the  system ; 
but  the  act  was  of  no  practical  use  whatever,  and 
the  Colonial  Office  declined  to  sanction  it.  In  Dem- 
erara  there  was  something  of  a  disturbance  caused 
by  the  slaves  in  one  part  of  the  colony,  who  had 
heard  vague  news  that  their  emancipation  was  com- 
ing, and  on  a  particular  day  struck  work,  as  we 
should  put  it  in  modern  phraseology.  This  unhappy 


SLA  VER  Y — BLA  CK  AND    WHITE  247 

little  movement  was  crushed  by  the  planters  with 
remorseless  severity,  and  an  incident  occurred  which 
was  very  timely,  in  the  fact  that  it  brought  home  to 
the  mind  of  the  British  public  a  distinct  idea  of  what 
the  slave  system  could  do  in  the  way  of  hardening  the 
minds  of  masters.  An  English  Dissenting  minister, 
the  Rev.  John  Smith,  was  accused  of  inciting  the 
slaves  to  insurrection.  He  was  put  in  prison;  he 
was  made  to  stand  a  trial,  which  by  its  utter  disre- 
gard of  all  the  rules  of  evidence  was  itself  an  act  of 
lawlessness ;  he  was  found  guilty  and  sentenced  to 
death.  The  court-martial  which  tried  him  accom- 
panied its  judgment  with  a  recommendation  for 
mercy ;  but  while  some  of  the  planters  were  humanely 
urging  that  the  recommendation  ought  to  be  carried 
out,  and  others  were  insisting  that  the  case  of  the 
poor  minister  afforded  an  opportunity  for  a  stern 
example,  to  warn  off  other  Abolitionists,  the  mis- 
sionary himself  died  from  the  effects  of  the  imprison- 
ment and  the  hard  treatment  he  had  received.  The 
news  of  this  death  created  a  profound  sensation  in 
England.  Brougham,  Mackintosh,  Lushington,  and 
other  philanthropists  stirred  up  the  feeling  of  Eng- 
lishmen to  indignation.  The  Government  were 
compelled  by  the  force  of  public  opinion  to  reverse 
the  sentence  of  the  court-martial;  and  even  when 
they  had  made  this  inevitable  concession  to  the 
common  feeling,  Brougham  went  very  near  to  carry- 
ing a  resolution  in  the  House  of  Commons  denounc- 
ing the  whole  conduct  of  the  trial. 

A  great  meeting  was  held  in  London  to  agitate 
for  the  complete  abolition  of  slavery  throughout  all 


248  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

the  British  Colonies.  Brougham  brought  on  the 
whole  question  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  intro- 
duced a  motion  on  the  general  subject  of  slavery. 
Powell  Buxton  did  the  same  thing  in  the  following 
session,  and  at  last  the  Government  began  to  feel 
that  they  must  give  way,  and  when  Parliament  met 
in  1833  there  was  a  new  man  in  the  office  of  Secre- 
tary for  the  Colonies,  Lord  Stanley,  the  eloquent 
Lord  Stanley  as  he  may  be  described,  who  was 
afterwards  the  Earl  of  Derby.  Lord  Stanley  was  a 
man  of  generous  emotions,  and  of  great  parliament- 
ary capacity.  Macaulay  said  of  him,  that  "  with 
Stanley  the  mastery  of  parliamentary  debate  was  an 
instinct."  Short  of  the  very  highest  gift  of  oratory, 
he  brought  everything  to  a  great  parliamentary  de- 
bate which  could  claim  success.  He  had  a  fine 
voice,  a  magnificent  gift  of  language,  and  in  espe- 
cial that  gift  of  phrase-making  which  has  had  such  a 
captivation  for  the  House  of  Commons.  Some  of 
us  can  still  remember  him  as  Lord  Derby  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  can  remember  that  in  that 
House  he  had,  after  Brougham's  death,  no  superior; 
while  in  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament  taken  to- 
gether he  had  no  superior,  and  indeed  no  equal, 
except  alone  Gladstone  and  Bright. 

Lord  Stanley  was  entrusted  with  the  task  of  ex- 
pounding to  the  House  of  Commons  the  policy  of 
the  Government  with  regard  to  the  question  of  slav- 
ery, and  of  proposing  for  the  acceptance  of  the 
House  certain  resolutions  in  which  that  policy  was 
to  be  embodied.  He  rose  to  his  task  with  splendid 
effect,  and  no  advocate  could  have  better  pleaded 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  249 

his  cause;  but  the  policy  of  the  Government  was 
not  yet  strong  enough  to  satisfy  the  feeling  of  the 
country.  Lord  Stanley  had  five  resolutions  to  pro- 
pose— resolutions  well  worthy  of  being  recorded, 
although  in  somewhat  abbreviated  form,  if  only  to 
show  that  the  high-water  level  of  the  Government 
policy  was  as  yet  but  the  low-water  level  of  the 
popular  demand.  The  first  resolution  declared  the 
opinion  of  the  House,  that  "  immediate  and  effectual 
measures  be  taken  for  the  entire  abolition  of  slavery 
throughout  the  colonies,  under  such  provisions  for 
regulating  the  condition  of  the  negroes  as  may  com- 
bine their  welfare  with  the  interests  of  the  pro- 
prietors." The  second  resolution  proposed  that 
"  all  children  born  after  the  passing  of  an  Act  of 
Parliament  for  this  purpose,  or  who  should  be  under 
the  age  of  six  years  at  that  time,  should  be  declared 
free,  subject  nevertheless  to  such  temporary  restric- 
tions as  may  be  deemed  necessary  for  their  support 
and  maintenance."  The  third  resolution  started  a 
new  principle  of  compromise  which  found  little 
favour  in  the  eyes  of  the  more  advanced  Abolition- 
ists. This  resolution  declared  that  "  all  persons 
then  slaves  should  be  entitled  to  be  registered  as 
apprenticed  labourers,  and  to  acquire  thereby  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  free  men,  subject  to  the  re- 
striction of  labouring,  under  conditions  and  for  a 
time  to  be  fixed  by  Parliament,  for  their  present 
owners."  The  fourth  resolution  authorised  the 
Government  to  advance,  by  way  of  loan,  a  sum  not 
exceeding  £15,000,000  sterling  to  provide  against 
any  loss  which  the  owners  of  slaves  might  suffer  by 


25O  SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

the  abolition  of  the  slave  system.  The  fifth  resolu- 
tion merely  gave  authority  to  the  Crown  to  establish 
a  staff  of  stipendiary  magistrates  in  the  colonies,  and 
to  provide  for  the  religious  and  moral  education  of 
the  negroes,  who  were  to  enter  into  a  sort  of  condi- 
tional freedom. 

The  first  and  second  resolutions  passed  easily 
enough,  but  the  third  became,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, a  subject  of  much  discussion.  Mr.  Buxton 
condemned  the  compromise  contained  in  the  reso- 
lution, and  argued,  with  much  ability,  that  the 
proposed  interval  of  qualified  servitude  would  do 
nothing  whatever  to  render  the  negroes  more  fit  to 
be  entrusted  with  full  and  final  freedom.  Mr.  Bux- 
ton received  the  powerful  support  of  Lord  Howick. 
Some  of  us  can  still  remember  Lord  Howick  when, 
as  Earl  Grey,  he  sat  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  was 
remarkable  at  once  for  his  sterling  abilities  and  for 
a  certain  independence  of  character  which  often 
made  it  difficult  for  him  to  submit  to  the  restraint 
of  official  position.  He  was  the  son  of  the  famous 
Lord  Grey, — Charles,  Earl  Grey, — the  leader  of  the 
reform  movement  in  England,  and  by  whom  the 
Reform  Bill  of  1830  had  been  introduced  into 
the  House  of  Lords.  Lord  Howick,  just  before 
he  spoke  against  Lord  Stanley's  third  resolution, 
had  given  proof  of  his  independence  of  character. 
He  had  been  appointed  Under-Secretary  for  the 
Colonies,  and  had  resigned  that  position  because 
he  could  not  support  or  sanction  the  dilatory  com- 
promise recommended  by  Lord  Stanley's  third 
resolution. 


SLA  VER  Y — BLA CK  AND    WHITE  2$  I 

The  Government  had  the  powerful  support  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Babington  Macaulay,  afterwards  famous  as 
essayist  and  historian,  son  of  the  Zachary  Macaulay 
who,  as  we  have  already  seen,  did  more  than  almost 
any  other  man  for  the  abolition  of  slavery.  The 
younger  Macaulay's  arguments  merely  went  to  the 
effect  that  the  transition  from  actual  slavery  to 
the  condition  of  apprenticeship  was  at  all  events  a 
decided  step  in  advance,  that  it  made  absolute 
emancipation  merely  a  question  of  a  few  defined 
years,  and  that  it  was  probably  about  as  far  as  the 
Government  could,  with  safety  to  the  very  interests 
which  they  were  striving  to  promote,  venture  to  go 
just  at  that  time.  One  interesting  fact  for  all 
modern  readers  is  that,  in  the  course  of  the  debates 
on  the  slavery  question,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  heard 
for  the  first  time  in  the  House  of  Commons,  which 
he  had  but  lately  entered.  Mr.  Gladstone  declared 
himself  in  favour  of  emancipation,  and  had  nothing 
to  say  in  support  of  any  slave  system  ;  but  he  was  of 
opinion  that  slave  emancipation  must  be  accom- 
plished gradually,  that  the  slave  must  be  educated 
and  stimulated  to  spontaneous  industry,  and  that 
the  owners  must  be  fairly  compensated  for  the  loss 
which  the  State  was  about  to  impose  on  them.  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  not  then  risen  to  the  high  level  of 
opinion  on  all  questions  concerning  any  manner 
of  slavery  to  which  he  rose  in  his  maturer  years. 

Mr.  Buxton  proposed  one  or  two  amendments  to 
the  third  resolution,  but  was  prevailed  upon,  by  the 
advice  of  some  of  his  friends,  to  allow  the  resolution 
to  pass  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  and  without 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

challenging  a  division.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  Ireland 
that  her  popular  leader,  Daniel  O'Connell,  refused 
to  listen  to  any  terms  of  compromise.  He  had  him- 
self seconded  Mr.  Buxton's  principal  amendment, 
but  he  firmly  declined  to  allow  the  third  resolution 
to  pass  without  challenge.  He  insisted  on  a  divi- 
sion, and  with  so  many  opponents  to  contend  against, 
— the  whole  Tory  party,  the  planter  party,  all  the 
regular  supporters  of  the  Government,  and  many 
sincere  friends  of  Abolition,  who  were,  nevertheless, 
willing  to  listen  to  some  sort  of  compromise, — 
O'Connell  carried  forty  votes  with  him  out  of  a 
House  of  three  hundred  and  twenty-four.  This 
might  seem  a  very  small  minority,  and  so  it  was, 
numerically  speaking;  but  those  who  understood  the 
House  of  Commons  saw  then,  as  those  who  under- 
stand it  will  see  now,  that  the  principle  which  at  such 
a  time  and  in  the  face  of  almost  unparalleled  diffi- 
culty could  secure  forty  independent  votes  was  a 
principle  to  be  reckoned  with  by  prudent  Ministers. 
The  proposal  of  the  Government  for  the  .£15,000,- 
ooo  loan  was  fiercely  opposed  by  all  the  friends  of 
the  planter  interest.  It  was  urged  on  behalf  of  the 
planters  that  the  amount  of  the  loan  would  not 
nearly  cover  the  loss  which  Abolition  would  bring 
upon  them,  and  there  were  not  wanting  many  shrewd 
political  go-betweens  who  hinted  in  public  and  ex- 
plained in  private  that  the  loan  was  never  likely  to 
be  repaid.  The  Government  after  a  while  began 
to  think  that  there  was  little  use  in  haggling  over 
the  settlement  of  so  portentous  a  question,  and  they 
withdrew  their  proposal  for  a  loan,  offering  instead 


LORD    MACAULAY. 
From  a  painting  by  Sir  Francis  Grant,  P.  R.  A.,  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


SLAVERY— SLACK  AND    WHITE  253 

an  absolute  gift  of  £20,000,000  sterling  out  of  the 
national  funds  to  recompense  the  planters  for  any 
loss  to  which  they  might  be  put.  The  proposal  was 
carried  without  a  division.  There  was  much  dif- 
ference of  opinion  about  its  justice  then,  and  there 
is  some  difference  of  opinion  even  now.  Why, 
it  was  asked,  should  the  English  populations  be 
taxed  to  meet  the  losses  which  men  might  suffer 
who  had  to  give  up  an  odious  trade,  against  which 
every  Christian  doctrine  and  every  humane  feeling 
alike  protested  ?  As  well,  it  was  urged,  might  the 
man  who  lived  by  the  carrying  off  and  selling  of 
slaves  claim  compensation  for  his  losses,  when  civil- 
isation pronounced  the  decree  that  his  infamous 
traffic  must  cease.  Why  should  not  the  pirate  plead 
for  compensation  when  international  law  declared 
that  he  must  no  longer  ravage  the  seas  ?  Yet  the 
Government  on  the  whole  was  right  in  spending 
the  money  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  measure  of 
Abolition.  England  had  grown  up  in  a  passive 
recognition  of  the  right  of  men  to  have  slaves  in 
the  colonies  and  to  make  their  profits  out  of  slave 
labour. 

Two  or  three  generations  before  the  time  of  Wil- 
berforce  and  Zachary  Macaulay,  it  seemed  quite  a 
natural  thing  that  the  man  who  acquired  West 
Indian  property  should  be  the  owner  of  slaves,  and 
nobody  thought  any  the  worse  of  him  for  it.  Eng- 
land had  allowed  men  to  grow  rich  by  slave  labour 
all  this  time,  without,  until  quite  lately,  raising  any 
strong  moral  protest  against  it.  We  have  seen 
already  how  a  public  opinion  had  to  be  literally 


254  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

created  in  order  to  sustain  any  Government  in  an 
attempt  to  abolish  the  ownership  of  slaves  and  the 
making  of  fortunes  out  of  slave  labour.  In  the  House 
of  Commons,  at  the  very  time  when  the  measure 
was  introduced,  there  were  many  men,  undoubtedly 
educated  and  humane,  who  did  not  see  anything 
deserving  of  utter  condemnation  in  the  system  of 
domestic  slavery.  More  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later  still  there  were  educated  and  humane  English- 
men who  got  up  on  public  platforms  in  London  at 
the  time  of  the  great  American  Civil  War  to  tell 
their  audiences  that  the  slaves  on  the  plantations  of 
Georgia  and  South  Carolina  were  better  fed  and 
cared  for  than  the  workers  in  many  an  English  fac- 
tory and  mine,  as  if  that  settled  the  whole  question 
and  left  nothing  else  to  be  said. 

On  the  whole,  then,  it  was  wise  of  the  Govern- 
ment to  get  out  of  the  entire  controversy  by  throw- 
ing down  £20,000,000  of  the  national  funds  to  buy 
out  the  opposition  of  the  planters  and  their  friends. 
The  Government  had  no  difficulty  in  carrying  their 
proposal  through  the  House  of  Commons  and  the 
House  of  Lords.  The  House  of  Lords,  it  may  be 
said,  has  rarely,  if  ever,  put  much  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  any  proposal  which  tends  to  benefit  the  own- 
ers of  landed  property,  at  home  or  in  the  colonies. 
A  bill  was  brought  in  by  the  Government  which 
with  some  modifications  simply  carried  into  effect 
Lord  Stanley's  resolutions  as  adopted  by  the  Repre- 
sentative Chamber.  The  principal  modifications 
were  the  substitution  of  the  larger  gift  for  the 
smaller  loan,  and  a  reduction  in  the  term  of  appren- 


SLA  VER  Y—BLA  CK  A  ND    WHI TE  255 

ticeship,  from  twelve  years  to  seven  in  one  category 
of  apprentices,  and  from  seven  years  to  five  in 
another.  The  bill  was  then  carried  easily  enough, 
and  slavery  as  a  system  was  declared  to  be  abolished 
for  ever  in  the  British  Colonies.  This,  as  has  been 
said,  was  the  first  great  work  of  the  reformed  Parlia- 
ment ;  and  it  will  be  readily  acknowledged  that  a  re- 
formed Parliament  could  not  have  started  on  its  way 
with  brighter  omens  than  those  which  were  shining 
from  that  first  great  success. 

During  the  debates  on  the  slavery  question  the 
philanthropists,  as  they  were  contemptuously  called, 
— in  other  words,  the  opponents  of  the  slave  system, 
— were  constantly  asked  by  the  advocates  of  the 
planters:  "  Why  don't  you  look  at  home  ?  Why 
don't  you  turn  to  the  condition  of  your  labourers  in 
ycur  factories  and  your  mines  ?"  "If  you  will 
only  think  about  their  condition,"  it  was  urged, 
"  you  will  have  little  time  left  to  maunder  and  pot- 
ter over  the  condition  of  the  slaves  in  the  plantations 
of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina.  Don't  you  know 
that  there  is  white  slavery  as  well  as  black  slavery, 
and  that  the  white  slavery  is  of  your  making,  so  far 
as  these  islands  are  concerned  ?  Think  more,  then, 
of  the  white  slaves  of  these  islands,  and  less  of  the 
black  slaves  of  Barbadoes  and  Jamaica."  It  would 
have  been  impossible  that  some  Englishmen,  and 
among  them  some  of  the  leading  opponents  of  West 
Indian  slavery,  should  not  have  the  condition  of  the 
white  slaves  of  Great  Britain  brought  to  their  minds 
long  before  the  advocates  of  West  Indian  slavery 
had  publicly  taunted  them  with  their  indifference  to 


256  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

the  domestic  evil.  One  of  the  principal  opponents 
of  slavery,  in  whatever  form,  was  the  late  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury — Lord  Ashley,  as  he  was  at  the  time 
of  the  West  India  Bill. 

Lord  Ashley  had  turned  his  attention,  from  his 
early  years,  to  the  condition  of  the  workers  in  our 
factories  and  our  mines.  To  him  white  slavery  was 
just  as  odious  as  black,  and  he  made  himself,  during 
his  long  career,  a  special  champion  of  the  white 
slaves.  Many  of  us  can  well  remember  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury during  his  later  days  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
Some  of  us  had  the  honour  of  his  personal  acquaint- 
ance, and  all  who  knew  him  admired  his  thorough 
probity,  his  perseverance,  and  his  practical  philan- 
thropy. He  was  not  by  any  means  intellectually  a 
great  man  ;  and  his  was  not,  in  politics,  a  command- 
ing figure.  He  was  a  good  speaker  on  any  subject 
which  he  had  thoroughly  made  his  own  and  mas- 
tered, but  he  never  shone  as  a  debater  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  where  the  years  of  his  best  activity 
were  spent,  nor  even  later  on  in  the  less  eager  and 
disturbing  atmosphere  of  the  House  of  Lords.  He 
had,  undoubtedly,  some  of  the  objectionable  quali- 
ties of  the  fanatic  about  him.  Where  religious 
questions  were  concerned  his  opponents  declared 
him  to  be  a  mere  bigot,  and  it  is  certain  that  he  had 
many  strong  prejudices,  and  was  sometimes  provok- 
ingly  wrong-headed.  All  the  same  he  was  a  genuine 
philanthropist,  and  when  he  kept  to  his  own  partic- 
ular questions  he  was  safe  and  steady  as  a  rock. 

Lord  Ashley  made  himself  the  pioneer  of  the  par- 
liamentary movement  for  the  regulation  of  the  work 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  257 

of  women  and  children  in  factories,  and  he  succeeded 
after  many  efforts  in  obtaining  the  appointment  of 
a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  whole  subject. 
The  commission  took  all  the  evidence  available,  and 
were  able  to  present  Parliament  and  the  public  with 
an  array  of  indisputable  facts  to  show  the  utterly 
destructive  effect,  both  moral  and  physical,  caused 
by  the  overtasking  of  women  and  children;  and 
Lord  Ashley  at  once  set  to  work  to  agitate  for 
the  passing  of  some  measures  which  would  limit 
the  hours  and  regulate  the  conditions  under  which 
women  and  children  were  to  be  kept  to  labour.  His 
efforts  raised  a  furious  controversy,  and  brought  up 
for  settlement  also  an  important  economical  question. 
The  outcry  raised  by  Lord  Ashley's  opponents  was 
that  his  agitation  was  directed  towards  a  legislative 
interference  with  the  freedom  of  contract.  There  is 
a  great  tendency  in  the  English  mind  to  be  governed 
by  phrases,  to  turn  some  favourite  phrase  into  an 
oracle,  and  allow  it  to  deliver  judgment  in  the  teeth 
of  whatever  evidences  and  facts.  For  years  and 
years  after  Lord  Ashley  had  started  his  movement 
there  were  numbers  of  Englishmen  filled  with  a  fond 
belief  that  the  words  "  freedom  of  contract  "  settled 
every  question  which  could  possibly  come  within  the 
reach  of  the  principle  they  were  supposed  to  embody. 
Was  it  really  proposed,  Lord  Ashley's  opponents 
asked  in  stern  accents,  that  Parliament  should  inter- 
fere with  the  freedom  of  contract ;  with  the  right  of 
one  man  to  hire  labour,  and  the  right  of  another 
man  to  let  it  out  for  hire  ?  If  a  grown  woman 
chooses  to  agree  with  an  employer  that  she  is  to 

VOL.  1.— IJ 


258  SLA  VER  Y—BLA  CK  A  ND    WHITE 

work  so  many  hours  a  day  at  a  specified  rate  of 
payment,  what  right  has  the  Imperial  Parliament  to 
say  that  she  shall  not  be  free  to  sell  her  labour  on 
such  conditions  as  she  finds  suitable  to  her  ?  If  a 
man  is  willing  to  let  out  the  labour  of  his  children 
for  so  many  hours  a  day  at  a  specified  rate  of  pay- 
ment, has  Parliament  a  right  to  step  in  and  say  that 
a  man  shall  not  deal  with  his  own  children  as  he 
thinks  best  for  his  interest  and  for  theirs  ?  Is 
it  really  proposed  that  the  State  shall  assume  the 
rights  of  paternity  over  all  the  children  of  the  work- 
ing classes  in  towns,  and  say  when  they  may  work 
and  when  they  may  not  work  ?  It  did  not  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  many  of  Lord  Ashley's  opponents 
to  ask  themselves  whether  in  such  cases  there  is 
always  any  real  and  equal  freedom  of  contract.  The 
hard-worked  artisan  in  a  city  with  half  a  dozen  child- 
ren whom  he  finds  it  hard  to  support — is  he  really 
quite  as  free  in  the  contract  for  their  labour  as  the 
capitalist  who  offers  to  hire  it,  and  who  can  get 
plenty  of  offers  from  others  if  some  one  particular 
working  man  declines  to  agree  with  his  terms  ? 

The  opposition  to  Lord  Ashley's  measures  did 
not  always  come,  howeve'r,  from  hard-headed  and 
hard-hearted  economists  who  believed  in  freedom  of 
contract  because  the  freedom  was  all  on  their  own 
side.  Many  men  of  the  highest  character  and  the 
most  unselfish  motives,  many  owners  of  factories 
who  had  through  all  their  lives  been  filled  with  the 
kindliest  feelings  towards  their  work-people,  were 
bitterly  opposed  to  the  whole  principle  underlying 
Lord  Ashley's  efforts.  Such  men  were  sincerely 


EARL   OF   SHAFTSBURY,    K.  G. 

From  a  bust,  mounted  by  Sir  John  Edgar  Boehm,  Bart.,  R.  A.,  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery. 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  259 

convinced,  in  many  cases,  that  the  economic  laws 
settled,  and  alone  could  settle,  every  trade  diffi- 
culty; and  that  Parliament  could  do  no  good,  and 
could  only  do  harm,  by  any  attempt  at  interference 
with  these  inexorable  influences.  We  have  lost  a 
good  deal  of  our  faith  in  the  extreme  beneficence  of 
economic  laws  since  that  time,  when  so  many  were 
inclined  to  give  to  them  a  strength  and  a  sanctity 
which  mere  instinct  alone  teaches  us  not  to  assign 
to  the  physical  laws.  We  know  that  legislation  can- 
not banish  winter  or  prevent  storms,  but  we  know 
also  that  we  can  build  houses  to  shelter  us  against 
the  winter  and  the  storm.  At  that  time  there  was 
an  opinion  widely  abroad  among  certain  of  the  com- 
mercial and  trading  classes  of  England  that  a  happy 
era  was  fast  approaching  when  almost  everything 
would  be  left  to  the  settlement  of  the  economic  laws 
and  the  magic  principle  of  freedom  of  contract. 
It  was  the  dream  then  of  many  men,  not  other- 
wise much  given  to  dreaming,  that  a  time  was 
fast  approaching  when  the  whole  postal  system 
of  civilised  countries  would  be  left  in  the  hands 
of  private  competition  and  freedom  of  contract. 
We  have  drifted  far  away  from  those  ideas  of  late 
years,  but  they  were  just  beginning  to  take  form 
and  strength  at  the  time  when  Lord  Ashley  was 
making  his  beneficent  efforts  to  regulate  the  labour 
of  women  and  children  in  factories. 

Lord  Ashley  was  supported  by  a  great  many 
landowners,  for  whom,  naturally,  the  working  of 
factories  had  no  direct  personal  concern,  and  who 
could  therefore  afford  to  be  philanthropic  at  the  ex- 


260  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

pense  of  the  factory  owners.  These  latter  and  their 
friends  therefore  turned  fiercely  on  the  landowners, 
and  asked,  "  Why  don't  you  call  for  the  regulation 
of  the  working  hours  of  women  and  children  on  your 
own  farms  and  on  your  own  fields  ?  "  They  argued 
that  the  condition  of  wretched  children  employed  in 
agricultural  labour  was  far  more  pitiable,  and  far 
more  deserving  of  the  intervention  of  Parliament, 
than  that  of  the  well-paid  and  well-cared-for  labour- 
ers in  the  factories,  who  were  able  to  take  care  not 
only  of  themselves,  but  also  of  their  wives  and 
children. 

Then,  again,  the  manufacturers  urged  that  it 
would  be  utterly  impossible  to  apply  any  general 
rule  to  all  the  various  forms  of  employment  in  fac- 
tories. Different  kinds  of  productiveness  required 
different  hours  and  conditions  of  production.  In 
some  trades  business  came  with  an  almost  over- 
whelming rush  at  one  period  of  the  year,  and  was 
slack  and  short  at  another;  how,  it  was  asked,  can 
you  find  any  legislative  rule  which  could  apply  with 
equal  fairness  to  such  labour  and  to  the  labour 
which  went  on  steadily  day  after  day  throughout 
the  year  ?  In  some  trades  the  assistance  of  the 
women  and  children  might  be  restricted  without  any 
serious  delay  of  the  labour  of  the  adult  men;  in 
others,  if  the  women  and  children  were  made  to 
stop  off  the  easy  work  which  gave  assistance  to  the 
whole  production,  the  grown  men  would  be  com- 
pelled to  let  their  work,  too,  come  to  a  standstill. 
How  is  it  possible,  it  was  asked,  to  get  any  Act  of  Par- 
liament which  can  deal  fairly  with  such  diversified 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  261 

conditions  of  labour  ?  and  what  can  Parliament  do, 
if  it  tries  its  bungling  hand  at  intervention,  but 
make  the  condition  of  things  infinitely  worse  than 
it  was,  until  another  Act  of  Parliament  has  to  be 
passed  to  abolish  by  the  common  consent  of  every- 
body the  misdirected  and  pernicious  legislation 
which  Lord  Ashley  and  his  philanthropic  friends 
were  striving  to  force  upon  the  State  ?  Lord  Ashley 
and  his  philanthropic  friends  won  the  day  neverthe- 
less, and  an  Act  was  passed  in  1833  limiting  the  work 
of  children  to  eight  hours  a  day,  and  that  of  young 
persons  under  eighteen  to  sixty-nine  hours  a  week. 
Lord  Ashley  persevered  in  the  policy  which,  under 
his  guidance,  had  proved  so  successful.  At  a  later 
period  he  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  appointment 
of  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  conditions  and 
the  results  of  the  employment  of  women  and  girls 
in  mines.  The  evidence  taken  before  the  commis- 
sion disclosed  a  state  of  things  which  shocked  and 
startled  even  the  most  languid  minds,  and  proved 
capable  of  bearing  down  all  opposition  in  the  end. 
The  evidence  brought  out  before  the  commission 
revealed  the  fact  that  in  several  of  the  coal-mines, 
for  instance,  women  were  employed  literally  as 
beasts  of  burden.  The  seams  of  coal  were  often  too 
narrow  to  allow  any  grown  person  to  stand  upright, 
and  the  women  had  to  creep  on  their  hands  and 
knees,  crawling  backwards  and  forwards  for  fourteen 
or  even  sixteen  hours  a  day.  But  they  had  not 
merely  to  crawl  backwards  and  forwards — they  had 
also  to  drag  after  them  the  trucks  laden  with  coal. 
The  trucks  and  the  women  were  harnessed  together 


262  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

after  the  simplest  and  rudest  fashion — the  usual 
plan  was  to  make  fast  each  truck  to  a  chain  which 
passed  between  the  legs  of  the  woman  engaged  in 
drawing  it,  and  the  chain  was  then  attached  to  a 
belt  which  was  strapped  round  her  naked  waist. 
The  women  who  worked  in  these  mines  usually  wore 
no  clothing  but  an  old  pair  of  trousers  made  of  the 
roughest  sackcloth;  they  wore,  in  fact,  the  same 
sort  of  costume  as  the  men,  and  the  chief  difference 
in  their  condition  was  that  they  were  put  to  a  lower 
and  more  degrading  kind  of  work  than  that  which 
was  allotted  to  their  male  companions.  These 
women  were,  indeed,  literally  unsexed ;  and  not  by 
any  means  merely  in  that  metaphorical  sense  in 
which  the  word  is  sometimes  now  employed  by  the 
opponents  of  an  agitation  for  woman's  suffrage.  It 
would  be  needless  to  attempt  to  describe  the  physi- 
cal and  moral  evils  which  were  necessarily  produced 
by  such  a  system. 

Lord  Ashley  pressed  on  his  movement,  and  it 
required  some  courage  on  the  part  of  any  anti- 
reformer  to  stand  up  against  it.  Finally  he  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  an  Act  of  Parliament  which 
prohibited  for  ever  the  employment  of  women  or 
girls  underground  in  the  mines.  The  Act  also  de- 
clared that  children  under  ten  years  of  age  were  not 
to  be  employed  in  the  mines  at  all ;  and  the  work  of 
the  children  above  ten  years  was  limited  and  regu- 
lated. A  number  of  Government  officials  were 
entrusted  with  the  task  of  seeing  that  the  provisions 
of  the  new  Acts  were  properly  carried  into  force. 

It  may  now  be  safely  affirmed  that  the  regulations 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  263 

for  the  employment  of  women  and  children  in  mines 
have  worked  with  the  most  satisfactory  results. 
Lord  Ashley  was  not  indeed  the  actual  pioneer  of 
the  movement  which  he  carried  to  such  great  suc- 
cess; many  benevolent  and  enlightened  men  had 
worked  before  him  for  the  same  purpose  and  with 
the  same  high  motives.  But  it  is  fairly  to  be  said 
that  Lord  Ashley  was  the  first  man  who  forced  the 
movement  on  the  attention  of  Parliament,  who 
directed  the  intelligence  and  the  sympathies  of  the 
public  in  the  right  way,  and  who  won  the  first  last- 
ing triumphs  for  the  great  cause  of  which  he  was  so 
unselfish  and  persevering  a  champion.  Since  that 
time  Parliament  has  been  going  farther  and  farther 
in  the  same  direction.  It  has  put  forth  its  hand  to 
regulate  the  hours  and  conditions  of  labour  in  work- 
shops ;  it  has  interfered  to  secure  for  the  workman 
some  compensation  for  injuries  caused  by  accidents 
amongst  the  machinery,  where  he  was  not  himself, 
by  negligence  or  otherwise,  responsible  for  the  harm 
he  had  suffered ;  it  has  asserted  over  and  over  again 
its  right  to  interfere  between  employer  and  work- 
man, where  the  workman  is  placed  at  an  evident 
disadvantage  by  conditions  over  which  he  has  per- 
sonally no  control ;  it  will  no  doubt  intervene,  sooner 
or  later,  on  behalf  of  the  children  who  work  in  the 
fields,  as  it  has  interfered  on  behalf  of  the  children 
who  work  in  the  factories ;  indeed,  it  may  be  taken 
for  granted  that  Parliament  will  go  on  for  a  long 
time  to  come  extending  the  application  of  the  prin- 
ciple adopted  in  1833  with  regard  to  the  hours  and 
conditions  of  labour. 


264  SLA  VER  Y—BLA  CK  AND    WHITE 

It  has  been  well  observed  that  the  course  of  legis- 
lation with  regard  to  the  labour  of  working  men  and 
working  women  has  already  passed  through  three 
distinct  stages.  The  first  stage  was  that  during 
which  no  person  not  directly  concerned  troubled 
himself  about  the  conditions  of  labour  at  all.  The 
employer,  it  was  commonly  assumed,  knew  better 
than  anybody  else  how  to  deal  with  those  who 
worked  for  him,  and  even  his  own  selfish  interests, 
it  was  complacently  argued,  would  have  prevented 
any  employer  from  overtaxing  his  workers  too  much ; 
the  man  who  harassed  his  work-people  beyond  their 
strength  would  never,  it  was  contended,  be  able  to 
get  work  enough  out  of  them,  and  so,  for  their  own 
sakes  at  least,  the  masters  would  deal  tenderly  with 
the  man  or  the  woman  or  the  child.  No  doubt  all 
this  was  true  of  many  intelligent  employers;  and 
no  doubt  it  was  true  also  that  a  large  proportion  of 
the  employers  were  men  too  humane  and  too  kindly 
to  exact  overwork  from  those  whom  they  employed. 
But  with  the  competition  that  exists  in  all  manu- 
facturing communities,  it  is  tolerably  certain  that 
the  work  standard  of  the  exacting  employers  will 
become  something  like  the  common  standard  of  the 
whole  body.  A  sort  of  class  public-opinion,  a  sort 
of  false  conscience,  is  apt  to  be  generated  even 
among  the  kindliest  of  men  who  are  rivals  in  the 
same  work,  where  no  check  is  imposed  by  the  world 
outside.  No  check  of  any  kind  was  employed  in 
England  before  the  agitation  began  which  Lord 
Ashley  conducted  to  success.  Then  there  came  a 
second  stage,  during  which  many  an  enlightened 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  265 

man  endeavoured  to  set  it  up  as  a  sort  of  scientific 
principle,  that  freedom  of  contract,  and  the  higher 
forces  of  political  economy,  would  manage  every- 
thing for  the  best ;  and  that  legislation  would  only 
make  things  infinitely  worse  by  its  unskilled  efforts 
to  interfere  between  capital  and  labour.  Then  there 
followed  the  third  stage  or  period,  during  which  it 
has  come  to  be  accepted  that  it  is  the  right  and  the 
duty  of  every  representative  Parliament  to  intervene, 
wherever  intervention  is  necessary,  for  the  physical 
and  moral  protection  of  its  citizens  against  evils 
which  are  not  by  any  means  a  necessary  part  of  the 
growth  of  civilisation.  For  years  and  years  we,  in 
these  countries,  have  grown  out  of  that  condition  of 
mental  development  which  can  be  satisfied  with  the 
dogma  that  freedom  of  contract  and  the  laws  of 
political  economy  may  be  trusted  with  the  manage- 
ment of  the  world.  Of  late  we  have  had  legislation 
to  intervene  between  the  right  of  the  landlord  to 
make  what  terms  he  pleases  with  the  tenant.  Leg- 
islation lately  has  shown  no  respect  whatever  for  the 
supposed  rights  of  the  owners  of  house  property  in 
the  great  cities  to  let  out  their  houses  under  what 
conditions  they  please  to  enforce.  We  have  had 
Act  of  Parliament  after  Act  of  Parliament  to  compel 
the  owners  of  property  to  look  after  the  sanitary 
condition  of  the  houses  and  the  rooms  which  they 
let  out  to  hire. 

It  ought  to  be  said  that  both  the  great  political 
parties  of  England  have  shown  themselves  equally 
ready  to  recognise  the  new  principles ;  and  the  Tory 
Governments  have  been  just  as  ready  as  the  Liberal 


266  SLA  VER  Y—BLA  CK  AND    WHITE 

Governments  to  interfere  between  the  employer  and 
the  workman,  the  landlord  and  the  tenant,  the  house- 
owner  and  the  lodger,  where  the  welfare  of  the  pub- 
lic called  for  such  intervention.  Indeed,  the  whole 
question  may  be  said  to  have  been  long  since  lifted 
out  of  the  sphere  of  partisan  politics.  Of  late  years 
there  has  been  a  sort  of  rivalry,  and  by  no  means 
an  ungenerous  or  unwholesome  rivalry,  between 
Liberals  and  Conservatives,  as  to  who  should  do  the 
most  for  the  protection  of  those  who  otherwise  could 
do  little  to  protect  themselves. 

Naturally,  as  the  working  population  grew  in  num- 
bers, in  education,  and  intelligence,  they  have  been 
able  to  assert  their  claims  with  an  effect  of  which 
their  forefathers  could  never  have  dreamed.  Nor 
can  it  fairly  be  said  that  in  later  days  the  working 
population  have  made  any  unfair,  or  even  unreason- 
able, use  of  their  growing  strength.  Working  men's 
associations  and  combinations  have  spread  all  over 
these  islands,  as  they  have  in  many  other  countries 
as  well;  and  certainly  we  in  these  islands  have  no 
reason  to  say  that  the  power  of  the  working  classes 
in  their  trades  unions  and  their  leagues  has  often  been 
misused.  It  is  not  so  long  since  any  combination  of 
working  men  to  come  to  a  common  understanding 
with  regard  to  the  hours  they  would  work  or  the 
wages  they  would  accept  was  an  offence  against  the 
law,  and  was  commonly  treated  as  such,  and  fol- 
lowed by  punishment  of  some  kind,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  the  masters  were  perfectly  free  to  agree  among 
themselves  as  to  the  rate  of  wages  they  would  pay 
and  the  hours  of  labour  they  were  to  exact. 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  267 

At  the  time  when  Lord  Ashley  began  his  agitation 
the  State  did  nothing  whatever  for  the  education  of 
the  working  man  and  his  children.  Since  that  time 
we  have  had  Acts  of  Parliament  not  merely  estab- 
lishing, but  even  enforcing,  systems  of  national  edu- 
cation. The  time  is  well  within  the  memory  of 
most  of  us,  when  it  was  a  common  saying  that  the 
principle  of  compulsory  education  was  something 
altogether  un-English,  a  sort  of  system  which  might 
suit  Germans  and  such  like,  but  could  never  be  ac- 
cepted among  the  free-born  population  of  Great 
Britain.  The  principle  of  compulsory  education 
has  done  as  much  as  anything  could  do  to  assist  the 
working  out  of  those  enlightened  laws  which  Lord 
Ashley  did  so  much  to  call  into  existence. 

Later  on,  a  new  and  very  peculiar  interference  be- 
tween employer  and  employed  was  accomplished  by 
Parliament.  It  did  not  strictly  belong  in  date,  or 
in  actual  conditions,  to  the  factory  legislation  which 
Lord  Ashley  and  his  friends  accomplished ;  but  in 
its  character  it  forms  a  proper  part  of  the  same  great 
movement  for  alleviating  the  condition  of  the  hard- 
working and  the  badly  used.  It  would  be  somewhat 
too  grotesque  to  speak  of  an  interference  between 
capital  and  labour,  where  the  capitalists  concerned 
were  only  the  master-sweeps,  and  the  labourers 
were  the  little  climbing-boys  who  were  employed 
to  cleanse  the  chimneys.  Yet  there  was  no  reform 
accomplished  by  the  whole  philanthropic  movement 
more  cruelly  needed  than  that  which  concerned  itself 
about  the  climbing-boys;  nor  were  the  sufferings 
endured  on  the  West  India  plantations  more  revolt- 


268  SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

ing  to  every  humane  mind  than  those  which  were 
inflicted  on  the  poor  little  helpless  mites  who  were 
sent  up  the  chimneys  in  all  the  towns  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland. 

Many  readers  now  will  be  required  to  be  told  what 
the  system  was,  which,  in  this  instance,  called  so 
pitifully  for  reform.  To  many  of  the  younger  gen- 
eration the  name  of  the  "  climbing-boy  "  may  con- 
vey possibly  no  manner  of  idea.  Young  men  and 
women  of  this  day  never  saw  a  climbing-boy,  never 
heard  the  cry  of  "  Sweep!  "  come  shrilly  into  the 
morning  air  from  the  top  of  a  chimney.  The  trade 
of  the  climbing-boy  is  believed  to  have  been  un- 
known to  any  country  but  the  two  islands  under  the 
English  Crown.  It  seems  to  have  begun  in  these 
countries  somewhere  about  the  opening  of  that 
eighteenth  century  to  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
look  back  with  an  admiration  which,  intellectually, 
that  century  well  deserves;  but  the  intellect  of 
the  century  did  not  apply  itself  over  keenly  to  the 
study  of  the  grievances  of  labour;  and  the  romantic 
youths  and  maidens  who  watched  the  sun  rise  with 
poetic  eyes  were  not  brought  back  to  the  practical 
rigours  of  life  by  the  morning  cry  of  the  climbing- 
boy. 

In  most  of  our  houses  then  the  chimneys  were 
high,  narrow,  and  crooked,  and  at  the  opening  of 
the  eighteenth  century  statesmanship  troubled  itself 
very  little  about  the  sanitary  conditions  of  house- 
building. It  became  after  a  while  the  settled  con- 
viction of  all  men  and  women  who  had  what  is  called 
the  practical  mind,  that  there  was  only  one  way  of 


SLAVERY—  BLACK  AND    WHITE  269 

properly  cleansing  a  chimney,  and  that  was  by  send- 
ing a  little  boy  with  a  broom  to  climb  his  way 
through  it  and  scrape  down  the  masses  of  soot  as  he 
mounted  up.  The  boy  had  to  climb  from  the  fire- 
place to  the  top  of  the  chimney  and  to  announce 
the  accomplishment  of  his  mission  by  crying  out 
"  Sweep!"  when  his  soot-covered  head  and  face 
emerged  from  the  chimney-top.  If  the  boy  did  not 
thus  present  himself  to  the  open  air  and  announce 
his  triumph,  who  was  to  know  that  the  lazy  little 
fellow  had  not  stopped  his  upward  movement  when 
half-way  up  the  chimney  and  then  begun  to  climb 
down  again  ?  The  interiors  of  narrow  chimneys  are 
not  provided  with  flights  of  steps  for  the  convenience 
of  climbing-boys,  and  therefore  the  poor  little  creat- 
ures had  to  force  their  way  up  by  working  their 
elbows  and  knees  against  the  different  sides  of  the 
horrible  structure.  As  a  matter  of  course,  their 
hands,  arms,  and  knees  were  always  abrased,  and 
sometimes  very  severely  injured,  by  this  terrible 
friction  with  the  internal  masonry  of  the  chimneys. 
Sometimes  a  chimney  was  so  narrow  that  a  poor 
little  boy  stuck  fast  in  it,  and  could  only  be  relieved 
from  his  awkward  and  dangerous  position  with  much 
trouble.  It  often  happened  that  when  the  boy  was 
sent  up,  the  chimney  was  still  hot  from  the  recent 
use  of  the  fire,  and  the  poor  little  creature  got 
severely  burnt.  It  was  proved  beyond  question  or 
doubt  that  in  many  cases  a  boy  who  stuck  fast  in  a 
still  heated  chimney  was  found  to  be  dead  when  at 
last  he  was  dragged  back  to  the  hearth.  The  poor 
little  creatures  were  dressed  in  a  short  gown  of  sack- 


2/0  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

ing,  which  was  so  covered  with  soot  that  it  looked 
as  if  it  never  could  be  made  clean  again — and  prob- 
ably, indeed,  no  attempt  was  ever  tried  to  make  it 
clean  again.  The  soot  of  one  day's  deposit  was 
added  to  the  soot  of  the  former  day,  and  after  the 
first  day  or  two  the  keenest  unprofessional  eye  could 
not  have  detected  any  difference  in  the  black  ac- 
cumulation. There  was  something  peculiarly  grim, 
pathetic,  and  touching  in  Charles  Lamb's  descrip- 
tion of  the  climbing-boys  as  "  these  almost  clergy 
imps."  The  faces  of  the  poor  boys  were  always 
covered  and  clotted  with  soot ;  and  as  the  master- 
sweep's  countenance  generally  bore  the  same  appear- 
ance, perhaps  as  a  professional  symbol,  it  was  not 
likely  that  any  great  use  was  made  of  soap  and  water 
to  give  the  climbing-boy  a  short  and  futile  interval 
of  cleanliness. 

For  years  and  for  generations  people  went  on 
taking  no  notice  of  the  sufferings  of  the  little 
sweeps;  the  ordinary  householder  grew  accustomed 
to  them, — it  is  very  easy  to  grow  accustomed  to  the 
routine  sufferings  of  other  human  creatures, — and  it 
never  occurred  to  most  persons  to  ask  themselves 
whether  humanity  could  do  nothing  in  the  matter. 
The  philanthropists,  as  usual,  were  the  first  to  stir 
in  the  wretched  business.  These  philanthropists 
would  not  even  be  content  to  let  the  master-sweep 
do  what  he  liked  with  his  own  climbing-boys.  In 
some  cases  they  were  literally  his  own  climbing- 
boys;  for  it  was  shown  in  evidence  that  master- 
sweeps  of  the  worst  class  had  sometimes,  for  the 
sake  of  economy,  employed  their  own  children  in 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  2? I 

sweeping  the  householders'  chimneys.  Here  again 
the  philanthropists  were  not  to  be  daunted;  they 
insisted  on  the  right  of  legislation  to  interfere  be- 
tween the  parent  and  his  child  when  the  parent  set 
his  child  to  the  filthy  and  dangerous  work  of  a 
climbing-boy.  The  philanthropists  carried  their 
way  in  the  end;  they  set  about  rousing  public 
opinion,  and  they  did  at  last  thoroughly  rouse  pub- 
lic opinion. 

A  mountain  of  evidence  was  produced  to  show 
the  horrors  of  the  system.  It  was  proved  that  in 
many  cases  master-sweeps  had  actually  employed 
little  girls  to  do  the  abominable  work;  and  it  was 
stated  in  Liverpool,  and  so  far  as  we  know  never 
contradicted,  that  in  one  case  at  least  a  master- 
sweep  who  had  a  wife,  a  young,  small,  and  slender 
woman,  passed  her  off  as  a  boy  and  employed  her 
in  the  climbing  of  chimneys.  In  many  cases,  as  it 
was  proved  by  uncontradicted  evidence,  when  a 
poor  child  stuck  fast  in  a  chimney  a  master-sweep 
declared  that  the  boy  was  only  shamming,  that  he 
was  lazy  and  stubborn,  and  accordingly  ordered  a 
fire  to  be  again  lighted  in  the  grate,  so  as  to  compel 
the  unfortunate  creature  to  mount  the  chimney  in 
order  to  escape  from  the  flames.  Of  course  the 
extreme  cases  thus  brought  forward  in  the  evidence 
did  not  even  profess  to  be  an  illustration  of  the 
common  ways  of  the  trade.  Many  of  the  master- 
sweeps  were  decent  poor  fellows  enough :  but  there 
was  the  trade,  under  the  same  conditions  as  those 
which  they  had  always  known  to  belong  to  it ;  and 
when  the  respected  and  educated  householder  in 


2/2  SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

the  towns,  when  the  county  gentleman,  and  even 
the  clergyman,  made  no  objection  to  the  practice, 
how  was  the  poor  sweep  to  find  out  that  the  em- 
ployment of  climbing-boys  was  a  disgrace  to  hu- 
manity ?  Such,  however,  it  was;  and  so  it  was 
soon  proved  to  be. 

The  master-sweep  and  his  ways  began  to  be  a 
horror  to  the  whole  community.  The  Saracens,  we 
read,  used  to  frighten  their  naughty  children  into 
submission  by  threatening  to  hand  them  over  to  be 
dealt  with  by  King  Richard  of  England.  In  days 
that  some  of  us  can  still  remember  many  a  rebellious 
infant  was  frightened  into  good  order  by  the  threat 
that  he  would  be  handed  over  to  the  master-sweep. 
All  sorts  of  stories  began  to  get  afloat  about  child- 
ren of  high  birth  and  delicate  nurture  who  were 
stolen  away  and  sold  to  the  master-sweep ;  and, 
indeed,  the  master-sweeps  began  to  play  in  legend 
and  in  romance  something  like  the  part  that  had 
been  played  by  the  gipsies.  A  long  time  had  to  be 
spent  in  energetic  agitation  before  anything  practi- 
cal was  done  by  Parliament;  but  at  last  in  1840  an 
act  was  passed  which  abolished  the  whole  system. 
For  a  certain  time,  however,  after  the  employment  of 
climbing-boys  had  thus  been  proclaimed  illegal  and 
with  a  penalty  on  it,  the  practice  was  still  carried  on 
clandestinely,  and,  indeed,  in  some  places,  with 
little  or  no  appearance  of  secrecy.  It  puts  the  or- 
dinary householder  out  of  his  way  to  be  told  that 
when  his  chimney  smoked  he  must  refuse  the 
friendly  offices  of  the  master-sweep,  unless  the  sweep 
came  provided  with  a  properly  made  mechanical 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE 

brush  for  the  purpose ;  and  some  of  these  average 
householders,  being  wedded  to  old-fashioned  ways, 
thought  the  new  system  was  only  all  nonsense  got 
up  by  those  interfering  reformers. 

Public  opinion,  however,  grew  and  grew,  and  at 
last  became  so  strong  and  general  and  keen-eyed 
that  the  most  old-fashioned  and  reactionary  house- 
holder could  not  let  his  neighbours  suppose  that 
he  was  a  party  to  the  torture  of  an  unfortunate 
climbing-boy.  The  machines  adopted  for  the 
cleansing  of  chimneys  proved  to  be  able  to  do  their 
work  in  a  manner  far  more  thorough  and  satis- 
factory than  the  most  energetic  poor  child,  who 
wore  out  his  life  under  the  old  system,  could  pos- 
sibly have  done.  Then  we  began  to  construct  our 
houses  on  the  more  rational  principles;  and  the 
sanitary  laws  came  to  be  consulted,  even  in  the  con- 
struction of  chimneys ;  and  there  was  no  longer  any 
occasion  for  the  sacrifice  of  the  childhood  of  thou- 
sands and  tens  of  thousands  of  little  climbing-boys. 
Society,  therefore,  it  was  found  out  at  last,  not  only 
did  not  lose  but  actually  gained  by  the  intervention 
of  the  philanthropic  reformers.  As  we  have  said, 
the  old  system  is  now  forgotten  by  the  present 
generation ;  but  it  is  quite  worth  while  to  revive  its 
memory  for  a  while,  if  only  to  tell  the  story  of  those 
poor  little  martyrs  to  civilisation  who  were  once  re- 
garded as  so  necessary  a  part  of  our  domestic  system 
that  people  never  thought  anything  about  their 
martyrdom,  and  did  not  even  consider  such  a  form 
of  employment  an  evil  serious  enough  to  call  for  a 
moment's  thought. 

VOL.1.— 18 


274  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

Another  of  the  reforms  which,  like  those  we  have 
already  been  describing,  came  in  the  wake  of  the 
great  Reform  Bill  itself,  was  the  abolition  of  the 
law  of  impressment  for  the  navy.  How  long  that 
law  of  impressment,  or  perhaps  that  custom  of 
impressment  which  soon  came  to  have  the  force 
of  a  law,  had  existed  in  our  history,  it  seems  hard, 
indeed,  to  decide.  What  we  do  know  is,  that  in 
the  days  of  the  early  Plantagenet  kings  we  find 
it  alluded  to  as  a  system  long  in  practice  and 
accepted  as  one  of  the  needs  of  our  national  de- 
fence. Of  course  it  became,  after  a  while,  regulated 
by  comparatively  modern  Acts  of  Parliament,  which 
endeavoured  to  soften  its  rigours  as  much  as  it 
seemed  possible  to  each  succeeding  generation  of  law- 
makers; but  the  very  laws  which  regulated  it  also 
of  necessity  acknowledged  and  sanctioned  the  custom 
of  impressment  for  the  navy.  No  regulation,  no 
mitigation,  could  make  it  anything  except  a  horrible 
grievance  and  a  disgrace  to  a  civilised  system. 

The  principle  of  all  the  acts  relating  to  impress- 
ment was  that  when  the  Government  wanted  sailors 
to  man  our  ships  of  war,  the  authorities  could  seize 
men  wherever  they  could  get  them,  could  capture 
them  as  if  they  were  felons,  and  could  send  them 
for  enforced  service  in  the  navy.  It  was  not  merely 
a  plan  of  conscription  like  that  which  still  exists  in 
many  civilised  countries,  applied  to  the  recruiting 
for  the  navy.  The  system  of  conscription,  whatever 
may  be  said  for  or  against  its  merits,  is  a  recognised 
system  which  applies  to  all  citizens  alike,  which  is 
one  of  the  responsibilities  of  citizenship  for  which  a 


SLAVERY — BLACK  AND    WHITE  2J$ 

citizen  can  prepare  himself  in  advance,  with  refer- 
ence to  which  he  can  mould  his  future  arrangements, 
and  for  which,  in  most  countries  where  it  prevails, 
he  is  free  to  find  a  substitute.  The  impressment  of 
men  for  the  navy  absolutely  depended  on  the  will 
or  even  the  caprice  of  the  authorities  of  that  branch 
of  the  Sovereign's  service.  A  sudden  alarm  of 
threatened  war,  a  mere  panic,  a  scare  as  we  should 
call  it  in  our  days,  might  be  enough  at  any  time  to 
set  the  naval  authorities  clamouring  for  fresh  hands 
to  the  work,  and  enough  to  put  the  impressment 
system  in  active  motion.  It  imposed  not  so  much 
a  civic  responsibility  as  a  penal  responsibility,  for 
the  impressed  men  were  simply  captured  and  carried 
off  as  if  they  were  escaped  convicts  who  had  to  be 
haled  back  to  prison. 

Naturally  the  seaport  towns  were  the  places  where 
the  naval  authorities  usually  made  their  captures, 
and  the  stray  seaman  from  a  merchant  vessel  was 
preferred  in  all  cases  to  the  ordinary  civilian.  The 
impressment  system  was  seldom  carried  on  upon 
anything  like  a  large  scale  without  serious  riot,  and 
sometimes  serious  loss  of  life.  The  novel-writer, 
the  poet,  and  the  painter  found  ample  and  varied 
themes  for  their  different  orders  of  art  in  the  work- 
ings of  this  extraordinary  system  of  naval  supply. 
Our  romance  is  full  of  stories,  some  of  which  are 
read  at  the  present  day  by  young  people  who  other- 
wise, probably,  would  never  have  known  what  the 
impressment  system  was.  Many  of  these  stories 
give  pathetic  accounts  of  young  men  pressed  into 
the  naval  service  just  as  they  were  returning  from 


2/6  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

the  church  where  they  had  been  married,  and  sent 
off  to  serve  at  war  on  the  seas,  perhaps  never  to  re- 
turn to  the  scenes  and  the  home  of  their  birth. 
There  is  at  least  one  touching  poem  which  tells  the 
story  of  a  young  man  thus  impressed  on  his  wedding- 
day,  who  serves  on  board  all  through  the  great  wars 
with  France  in  Napoleon's  time,  who  returns,  a  man 
of  more  than  middle  age,  to  find  that  his  wife  has 
long  been  dead,  and  that  in  his  native  town  nobody 
even  remembers  his  name.  Poetic  stories,  some- 
what like  that  of  Tennyson's  Enoch  Arden,  gave  an 
additional  pang  to  the  pathos,  by  describing  the 
man  as  returning  to  his  home  to  find  his  wife,  who 
had  long  believed  him  dead,  married  to  another 
husband  ;  and  picture  him  in  despair  returning  again 
to  the  sea  and  the  service,  which  had  been  his  hard- 
est enemies,  but  had  now  become  his  only  friends. 
In  many  of  Captain  Marryat's  novels,  once  the  de- 
light of  all  boys  and  of  many  grown  men,  we  have 
vivid  pictures  of  the  riots  caused  by  some  sudden 
impressment  in  one  of  our  seaport  towns;  of  the 
press-gang,  as  it  was  called,  forcing  its  way,  cut- 
lass in  hand  and  pistols  in  belt,  through  resisting 
streets  and  lanes,  which  fire  their  shots  from  the 
windows  as  if  they  were  striving  to  check  the  move- 
ments of  a  conquering  invader;  of  houses  defended 
literally  from  room  to  room ;  of  desperate  hand-to- 
hand  fights;  of  women  joining  in  the  struggle;  of 
wounds  given  and  received ;  of  death-blows  given 
and  received ;  and,  finally,  of  the  captured  men 
dragged  off  as  convicts  might  have  been  dragged  to 
the  galleys. 


SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE  2JJ 

At  last  public  opinion  began  to  be  aroused  to  the 
horrors  of  the  system.  The  philanthropic  reformer, 
here,  as  everywhere  else,  was  asserting  his  presence 
and  making  his  voice  heard.  The  anti-reformers 
were  stubborn.  It  was  an  article  of  faith  with  every 
anti-reformer  that  it  would  be  utterly  impossible  to 
man  the  navy  if  the  power  to  impress  men  and  drag 
them  on  board  ship  were  not  left  unchecked  and 
unchallenged  in  the  hands  of  the  authorities.  To 
listen  to  such  arguments  might  well  have  made  a 
foreigner  imagine  that  the  Englishman  of  the  poorer 
class,  especially  in  the  seaport  towns,  was  a  creature 
who  detested  the  sea  waves,  who  had  not  the  cour- 
age to  fight  an  enemy,  and  who  thought  it  no  con- 
cern of  his  even  if  the  Frenchman  were  to  invade 
the  country.  The  reformers,  however,  had  their 
way  in  the  end.  They  were  now,  in  fact,  riding  on 
the  crest  of  the  reform  wave;  and  in  1835  the  Gov- 
ernment brought  in  a  bill  to  abolish  the  press-gang 
and  to  fix  a  period  of  five  years  as  the  limit  of  com- 
pulsory service  in  the  navy.  Since  the  abolition  of 
the  press-gang  it  has  not  been  found  that  the  naval 
service  of  England  has  been  wholly  neglected,  or 
that  English  fleets  are  utterly  without  sailors  to  man 
them. 

One  genuine  reform  usually  brings  another  in  its 
wake.  The  abolition  of  the  press-gang  system  gave 
the  first  fair  chance  for  the  abolition  of  flogging  in 
the  navy.  When  the  press-gang  captured  and  car- 
ried off  dozens  of  men  from  the  lower  quarters  of 
some  seaport  town,  it  was  not  usual  to  require  a 
certificate  of  character  from  the  men  who  were  thus 


2/8  SLAVERY—  BLACK  AND  WHITE 

compelled  to  do  service  in  the  fleet.  It  very  often 
happened  that  the  press-gang  swept  off  among  their 
captives  many  men  who  helped  to  form  the  mere 
scum  of  the  streets  in  which  they  were  found — men 
who  had  just  come  out  of  prison  and  were  likely 
enough  before  long,  if  they  remained  on  shore,  to 
commit  some  new  offence  and  be  sent  to  prison  once 
more.  Men  of  this  class,  sent  to  do  duty  in  the 
forecastle  of  one  of  our  vessels  of  war,  were  not 
likely  to  exercise  a  moralising  influence  on  the 
habits  and  characters  of  the  sailors  who  were  com- 
pelled to  associate  with  them.  The  disorder,  the 
bad  example,  the  defiance  of  discipline  which  such 
impressed  men  brought  with  them  sometimes  were 
infectious  in  their  character,  and  helped  to  debase  a 
ship's  company.  Crimes  were  undoubtedly  some- 
times committed  which  might  excuse  the  mainten- 
ance of  the  flogging  system  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  believed  that  anything  but  evil  could  possibly 
come  out  of  such  a  system. 

The  abolition  of  flogging  in  the  navy  is  an  event 
which  comes  well  within  the  recollection  of  most 
of  us.  Some  of  the  most  effective  arguments  made 
in  the  House  of  Commons  against  the  use  of  the 
lash  as  a  means  of  enforcing  discipline  were  made  by 
the  owners  of  great  merchant  vessels  or  passenger 
vessels  who  happened  to  be  Members  of  Parliament. 
These  men  pointed,  again  and  again,  to  the  example 
afforded  by  the  discipline  of  the  mercantile  fleets. 
Take,  they  said,  the  great  Atlantic  lines  of  steamers, 
the  great  Pacific  lines  of  steamers,  the  merchant 
steamers  sailing  every  day  from  the  port  of  London, 


SLAVERY—  &LACK  AND    WHITE 

from  Liverpool,  from  Newcastle,  from  Glasgow, 
from  Southampton,  from  every  great  seaport  town 
— where  can  you  find  discipline  better  maintained  ? 
These  vessels  run  all  the  risks  that  the  war  steamers 
have  to  face,  except  alone  the  rare  risk  of  war,  and 
it  was  not  pretended  even  by  the  stoutest  advocate 
of  flogging  that  the  blue-jacket  was  only  inclined  to 
fail  in  his  duty  when  he  had  to  encounter  a  floating 
enemy  and  a  foreign  flag.  The  finest  of  the  mer- 
chant fleets  had  the  additional  disadvantage  of  hav- 
ing to  carry  on  board  great  numbers  of  passengers, 
men,  women,  and  children,  whose  presence  at  a 
time  of  threatened  wreck  must  undoubtedly  tend  to 
increase  confusion  and  to  make  the  prompt  and 
efficient  discharge  of  the  seaman's  duty  much  more 
difficult.  Yet  the  merchant  vessels  were  able  to  do 
all  their  various  and  complicated  work,  although 
their  captains  were  not  entrusted  with  the  right  of 
flogging  a  refractory  seaman. 

The  arguments  of  the  reformers  prevailed  in  the 
end;  and  the  flogging  system  was  abolished  both 
from  army  and  navy.  In  truth  it  is  hard  to  believe 
that  any  Government  could  have  serious  difficulty 
in  manning  either  army  or  navy  if  reasonable  and 
liberal  measures  were  adopted  to  make  it  worth  the 
while  of  a  decent  class  of  men  to  enter  into  either 
field  of  England's  warlike  service.  The  navy,  in 
especial,  has  always  been  dear  to  the  general  popu- 
lation of  England.  The  Greeks  of  the  classic  days 
and  the  English  of  all  days  have  been  described  as 
the  only  two  peoples  whose  literature  pictures  the 
sea  as  a  smiling  and  a  tempting  sight.  The  young 


280  SLAVERY— BLACK  AND    WHITE 

Englishman  of  the  poorest  class  has  a  natural  fond- 
ness and  aptitude  for  the  sea;  and  although,  even  at 
the  present  time,  we  have  our  occasional  scares,  and 
we  find  eager  anti-reformers  crying  out  that  the 
service  is  going  to  the  dogs,  there  is  no  evidence  to 
prove  or  even  to  suggest  that  England  is  likely  to 
want  seamen  at  any  hour  of  national  need.  Time 
has  proved  that  the  naval  service  is  all  the  better  for 
the  disenrolment  of  the  press-gang  and  the  abolition 
of  the  lash. 

END  OF  VOLUME  I. 


Heroes  of  the  Nations. 


EDITED   BY 


EVELYN  ABBOTT,  M.A., 
FELLOW  OF  BALLIOL  COLLEGE,  OXFORD. 


A  SERIES  of  biographical  studies  of  the  lives  and  work 
of  a  number  of  representative  historical  characters  about 
whom  have  gathered  the  great  traditions  of  the  Nations 
to  which  they  belonged,  and  who  have  been  accepted,  in 
many  instances,  as  types  of  the  several  National  ideals. 
With  the  life  of  each  typical  character  will  be  presented 
a  picture  of  the  National  conditions  surrounding  him 
during  his  career. 

The  narratives  are  the  work  of  writers  who  are  recog- 
nized authorities  on  their  several  subjects,  and,  while 
thoroughly  trustworthy  as  history,  will  present  picturesque 
and  dramatic  "  stories  "  of  the  Men  and  of  the  events  con- 
nected with  them. 

To  the  Life  of  each  "  Hero  "  will  be  given  one  duo- 
decimo volume,  handsomely  printed  in  large  type,  pro- 
vided with  maps  and  adequately  illustrated  according  to 
the  special  requirements  of  the  several  subjects.  The 
volumes  will  be  sold  separately  as  follows  : 

Large  12°,  cloth  extra $i  50 

Half  morocco,  uncut  edges,  gilt  top      .        .        •       I  75 


HEROES  OF  THE  NATIONS. 

Nelson,  and  the  Naval  Supremacy  of  England.     By  W.  CLARK  RUSSELL,  author  of 

"  The  Wreck  of  the  Grosvenor,"  etc. 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  and  the  Struggle  of  Protestantism  for  Existence.    By  C.  R. 

L.  FLETCHER,  M.A.,  late  Fellow  of  All  Souls'  College. 
Pericles,  and  the  Golden  Age  of  Athens.    By  EVELYN  ABBOTT,  M.A. 
Theodoric  the  Goth,   the   Barbarian  Champion  of  Civilisation.      By  THOMAS 

HODGKIN,  author  of  "  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,"  etc. 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  the  Chivalry  of  England.    By  H.  R.  FOX-BOURNE,  author  of 

"  The  Life  of  John  Locke,"  etc. 
Julius  Caesar,   and  the  Organisation   of  the  Roman   Empire.       By  W.   WARD 

FOWLER,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 
John  Wyclif,  Last  of  the  Schoolmen,  and  First  of  the  English  Reformers.    By 

LEWIS  SERGEANT,  author  of  "  New  Greece,"  etc. 
Napoleon,  'Warrior  and  Ruler,  and  the  Military  Supremacy  of  Revolutionary 

France.     By  W.  O'CONNOR  MORRIS. 

Henry  of  Navarre,  and  the  Huguenots  of  France.    By  P.  F.  WILLERT,  M.A.,  Fel- 
low of  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 
Cicero,  and  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Republic.    By  J.  L.  STRACHAN-DAVIDSON,  M.A., 

Fellow  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  and  the  Downfall  of  American  Slavery.     By  NOAH  BROOKS. 
Prince  Henry  (of  Portugal)  the  Navigator,  and  the  Age  of  Discovery.    By  C.  R. 

BEAZLEY,  Fellow  of  Merton  College,  Oxford. 
Julian  the  Philosopher,  and  the  Last  Struggle  of  Paganism  against  Christianity. 

By  ALICE  GARDNER. 
Louis  XIV.,  and  the  Zenith  of  the  French  Monarchy.     By  ARTHUR  HASSALL, 

M.A.,  Senior  Student  of  Christ  Church  College,  Oxford. 
Charles  XII.,  and  the  Collapse  of  the  Swedish  Empire,  1682-1719.      By  R.  NISBET 

BAIN. 
Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  and  Florence  in  the  isth  Century.      By  EDWARD  ARMSTRONG, 

M.A.,  Fellow  of  Queen's  College,  Oxford. 
Jeanne  d'Arc.     Her  Life  and  Death.     By  Mrs.  OLIPHANT. 
Christopher  Columbus.     His  Life  and  Voyages.     By  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 
Robert  the  Bruce,  and  the  Struggle  for  Scottish  Independence.     By  Sir  HERBERT 

MAXWELL,  M.P. 
Hannibal,  Soldier,  Statesman,  Patriot;  and  the  Crisis  of  the  Struggle  between 

Carthage  and  Rome.       By  W.  O'CONNOR   MORRIS,  Sometime   Scholar  of  Oriel 

College,  Oxford. 
Ulysses  S.  Grant,  and  the  Period  of  National  Preservation  and  Reconstruction, 

1892-1885.     By  Lieut.-Col.  WILLIAM  CONANT  CHURCH. 
Robert   E.  Lee,  and  the   Southern   Confederacy,    1807-1870.       By  Prof.   HENRY 

ALEXANDER  WHITE,  of  the  Washington  and  Lee  University. 
The  Cid  Campeador,  and  the  Waning  of  the  Crescent  in  the  West.      By  H. 

BUTLER  CLARKE,  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford. 
Saladin,  and  the  Fall  of  the  Kingdom  of  Jerusalem.     By  STANLEY  LANE-POOLE, 

author  of  "  The  Moors  in  Spain,"  etc. 
Bismarck,  and  the  New  German  Empire.    How  it  Arose  and  What  it  Displaced. 

By  W.  J.  HEADLAM,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  King's  College. 

To  be  followed  by  : 
Moltke,   and  the  Military  Supremacy  of  Germany.      By  SPENCER  WILKINSON, 

London  University. 
Judas  Maccabaeus,  the  Conflict  between  Hellenism  and  Hebraism.     By  ISRAEL 

ABRAHAMS,  author  of  "The  Jews  of  the  Middle  Ages." 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON. 


The  Story  of  the  Nations. 


MESSRS.  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  take  pleasure  in 
announcing  that  they  have  in  course  of  publication,  in 
co-operation  with  Mr.  T.  Fisher  Unwin,  of  London,  a 
series  of  historical  studies,  intended  to  present  in  a  graphic 
manner  the  stories  of  the  different  nations  that  have 
attained  prominence  in  history. 

In  the  story  form  the  current  of  each  national  life  is 
distinctly  indicated,  and  its  picturesque  and  noteworthy 
periods  and  episodes  are  presented  for  the  reader  in  their 
philosophical  relation  to  each  other  as  well  as  to  universal 
history. 

It  is  the  plan  of  the  writers  of  the  different  volumes  to 
enter  into  the  real  life  of  the  peoples,  and  to  bring  them 
before  the  reader  as  they  actually  lived,  labored,  and 
struggled — as  they  studied  and  wrote,  and  as  they  amused 
themselves.  In  carrying  out  this  plan,  the  myths,  with 
which  the  history  of  all  lands  begins,  will  not  be  over- 
looked, though  these  will  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
the  actual  history,  so  far  as  the  labors  of  the  accepted 
historical  authorities  have  resulted  in  definite  conclusions. 

The  subjects  of  the  different  volumes  have  been  planned 
to  cover  connecting  and,  as  far  as  possible,  consecutive 
epochs  or  periods,  so  that  the  set  when  completed  will 
present  in  a  comprehensive  narrative  the  chief  events  in 
the  great  STORY  OF  THE  NATIONS  ;  but  it  is,  of  course, 
not  always  practicable  to  issue  the  several  volumes  in 
their  chronological  order. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NATIONS. 

The  "Stories"  are  printed  in  good  readable  type,  and  in 
handsome  i2mo  form.  They  are  adequately  illustrated  and 
furnished  with  maps  and  indexes.  Price  per  vol.,  cloth,  $1.50  ; 
half  morocco,  gilt  top,  $1.75. 

The  following  are  now  ready  : 


GREECE.    Prof.  Jas.  A.  Harrison. 
ROME.    Arthur  Oilman. 
THE  JEWS.  Prof.  James  K.  Hosmer. 
CHALDEA.     Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
GERMANY.    S.  Baring-Gould. 
NORWAY.     Hjalmar  H.  Boyesen. 
SPAIN.     Rev.  E.  E.  and  Susan  Hale. 
HUNGARY.     Prof.  A.  Vambery. 
CARTHAGE.    Prof.  Alfred  J.  Church. 
THE  SARACENS.     Arthur  Oilman. 
THE   MOORS   IN   SPAIN.      Stanley 

Lane-Poole. 

THE  NORMANS.  Sarah  Orne  Jewett. 
PERSIA.     S.  G.  W.  Benjamin. 
ANCIENT  EGYPT.    Prof.  Geo.  Raw- 

linson. 
ALEXANDER'S  EMPIRE.     Prof.  J. 

P.  Mahaffy. 

ASSYRIA.     Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
THE  GOTHS.     Henry  Bradley. 
IRELAND.     Hon.  Emily  Lawless. 
TURKEY.     Stanley  Lane-Poole. 
MEDIA,  BABYLON,  AND  PERSIA. 

Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
MEDIEVAL  FRANCE.     Prof.  Gus- 

tave  Masson. 

HOLLAND.  Prof.  J.  Thorold  Rogers. 
MEXICO.     Susan  Hale. 
PHOENICIA.    Geo.  Rawlinson. 
THE  HANSA  TOWNS.     Helen  Zim- 

mern. 
EARLY  BRITAIN.      Prof.  Alfred  J. 

Church. 

THE  BARBARY  CORSAIRS.    Stan- 
ley Lane-Pool. 
RUSSIA.    W.  R.  Morfill. 
THE  JEWS  UNDER  ROME.    W.  D. 

Morrison. 

SCOTLAND.    John  Mackintosh. 
SWITZERLAND.  R.  Stead  and  Mrs. 

A.  Hug. 

PORTUGAL.     H.  Morse-Stephens. 
THE  BYZANTINE  EMPIRE.  C.  W. 

C.  Oman. 

SICILY.     E.  A.  Freeman. 
THE  TUSCAN  REPUBLICS.     Bella 

Duffy. 
POLAND.    W.  R.  Morfill. 


PARTHIA.    Geo.  Rawlinson. 

JAPAN.     David  Murray. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  RECOVERY  OF 

SPAIN.     H.  E.  "Watts. 
AUSTRALASIA.        Greville   Tregar- 

then. 
SOUTHERN    AFRICA.         Geo.    M. 

Theal. 

VENICE.     AletheaWiel. 
THE  CRUSADES.    T.  S.  Archer  and 

C.  L.  Kingsford. 

VEDIC  INDIA.    Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
BOHEMIA.     C.  E.  Maurice. 
CANADA.    J.  G.  Bourinot. 
THE   BALKAN  STATES.     William 

Miller. 
BRITISH  RULE  IN  INDIA.     R.  W. 

Frazer. 

MODERN  FRANCE.    Andr6  Le  Bon. 
THE  BUILDINGOFTHE  BRITISH 

EMPIRE.    Alfred  T.  Story.     Two 

vols. 

THE  FRANKS.     Lewis  Sergeant. 
THE   PEOPLE   OF   ENGLAND   IN 

THE   igTH    CENTURY.      Justin 

McCarthy,  M.P.     Two  vols. 

Other  volumes  in  preparation  are  : 
THE    WEST     INDIES.      Amos    K. 

Fiske. 
MODERN  SPAIN.     Major  Martin  A. 

S.  Hume. 
AUSTRIA,    THE    HOME   OF    THE 

HAPSBURG  DYNASTY,   FROM 

1282  TO   THE    PRESENT   DAY. 

Sydney  Whitman. 
THE   UNITED    STATES,   1775-1897. 

A.   C.    McLaughlin,    Professor    of 

American   History,  University  of 

Michigan.    In  two  vols. 
BUDDHIST    INDIA.      Prof.    T.  W. 

Rhys-Davids. 
MOHAMMEDAN   INDIA.      Stanley 

Lane-Poole. 
THE    THIRTEEN    COLONIES. 

Helen  A.  Smith. 
WALES  AND  CORNWALL.   Owen 

M.  Edwards, 
THE  ITALIAN    KINGDOM. 


HEROES  OF  THE  REFORMATION 

I.— Martin  Luther  (1483-1546).  THE  HERO  OF  THE  REFOR- 
MATION. By  Henry  Eyster  Jacobs,  D.D.,  LL.D.  (Thiel 
College,  1877,  an<l  1891,  respectively)  ;  Professor  of  Sys- 
tematic Theology,  Evangelical  Lutheran  Seminary,  Phila- 
delphia, Pa.;  author  of  "The  Lutheran  Movement  in 
England  during  the  Reigns  of  Henry  VIII.  and  Edward 
VI.,  and  its  Literary  Monuments."  With  73  illustrations, 
12°,  $1.50. 

II. — Philip  Melanchthon    (1497-1560).     THE  PROTESTANT 
PRECEPTOR  OF  GERMANY,     By  James  William  Richard, 
D.D.  (Pennsylvania  College,   1886)  ;   Professor  of  Homi- 
letics,  Lutheran  Theological  Seminary,   Gettysburg,   Pa. 
With  35  illustrations.     12°,  $1.50. 

III. — Desiderius  Erasmus  (1467-1536).  THE  HUMANIST  IN 
THE  SERVICE  OF  THE  REFORMATION.  By  Ephraim  Emer- 
ton,  Ph.D.  (Leipzig  University,  1876) ;  Professor  of  Eccle- 
siastical History,  Harvard  University,  Cambridge,  Mass.  ; 
author  of  "  The  Middle  Ages  (375-1300)," 

The  following  are  in  preparation  : — 

IV.— Thomas  Cranmer  (1489-1556).    THE  ENGLISH  REFORM- 

ER.     (Author  will  be  announced  later.) 

V.— Huldreich  Zwingli  (1484-1531).  THE  REFORMER  OF 
GERMAN  SWITZERLAND.  By  Samuel  Macaulay  Jackson, 
LL.D.,  (Washington  and  Lee  University,  1892)  ;  D.D. 
(New  York  University,  1893) ;  Professor  of  Church  His- 
tory,  New  York  University.  Editor  of  the  Series. 
VI. — John  Knox  (1505-1572).  THE  HERO  OF  THE  SCOTCH 

REFORMATION.  (Author  will  be  announced  later.) 
VII. — John  Calvin  (1509-1564).  THE  FOUNDER  OF  REFORMED 
PROTESTANTISM.  By  Williston  Walker,  Ph.D.  (Leipzig 
University,  1888) ;  D.D.  (Adelbert  College,  1894,  Amherst 
College,  1895) ;  Professor  of  Germanic  and  Western  Church 
History,  Theological  Seminary,  Hartford,  Conn.  ;  author 
of  "  The  Creeds  and  Platforms  of  Congregationalism." 
VIII.— Theodore  Beza  (1519-1605).  THE  COUNSELLOR  OF  THE 
FRENCH  REFORMATION.  By  Henry  Martyn  Baird,  Ph.D. 
(College  of  New  Jersey,  1867);  D.D.  (Rutgers  College, 
1877)  ;  LL.D.  (College  of  New  Jersey,  1882)  ;  L.H.D. 
(Princeton  University,  1896)  ;  Professor  of  the  Greek 
Language  and  Literature,  New  York  University  ;  author 
of  "  The  Huguenots,"  6  vols. 


G.  P,  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


THE  SCIENCE  SERIES 


(Volumes  ready,  in  press,  and  in  preparation.) 
The  Study  of  Man.     By  Professor  A.  C.  HADDON,  M.A.,  D.Sc.,  Royal 

College  of  Science,  Dublin.     Illustrated.    8°,     $2.00 
The  Groundwork  of  Science.      A  Study  of  Epistemology.      By  ST. 

GEORGE  MIVART,  F.R.S.    8°,    $1.75 
Rivers  of  North  America.     A  Reading  Lesson  for  Students  of  Geography 

and  Geology.     By  ISRAEL  C.  RUSSELL,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Geology 

in  the  University  of  Michigan.     Illustrated. 
Earth  Sculpture.      By  Professor  JAMES  GEIKIE,  F.R.S.,  University  of 

Edinburgh.     Illustrated. 
The  Stars.     By  Professor  SIMON  NEWCOMB,  U.S.N.,  Nautical  Almanac 

Office,  and  Johns  Hopkins  University. 

Meteors  and  Comets.    By  Professor  C.  A.  YOUNG,  Princeton  University. 
The  Measurement  of  the  Earth.     By  Professor  T.  C.  MENDENHALL, 

Worcester  Polytechnic  Institute,  formerly  Superintendent  of  the  U.  S. 

Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey. 

Volcanoes.     By  T.  G.  BONNEY,  F.R.S.,  University  College,  London. 

Earthquakes.    By  Major  C.  E.  BUTTON,  U.S.A. 

Physiography;  The  Forms  of  the  Land.     By  Professor  W.  M.  DAVIS, 

Harvard  University. 

The  History  of  Science.     By  C.  S.  PEIRCE. 
General  Ethnography.     By  Professor  DANIEL  G.  BRINTON,  University 

of  Pennsylvania. 
Recent  Theories  of  Evolution.    By  J.   MARK  BALDWIN,   Princeton 

University. 

Whales.     By  F.  E.  BEDDARD,  F.R.S.,  Zoological  Society,  London. 
The  Reproduction  of  Living  Beings.      By  Professor  MARCUS  HARTOG, 

Queen's  College,  Cork. 

Man  and  the  Higher  Apes.     By  Dr.  A.  KEITH,  F.R.C.S. 
heredity.     By  J.  ARTHUR  THOMPSON,  School  of  Medicine,  Edinburgh. 
Life  Areas  of  North  America :  A  Study  in  the  Distribution  of 

Animals  and  Plants.     By  Dr.  C.  HART  MERRIAM,  Chief  of  the  Bio- 
logical Survey,  U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture. 
Age,    Growth,   Sex,  and   Death.     By  Professor  CHARLES  S.  MINOT, 

Harvard  Medical  School. 
Bacteria.     Dr.  J.  H.  GLADSTONE. 
History  of  Botany.     Professor  A.  H.  GREEN. 
Planetary  Motion.     G.  W.  HILL. 
Infection  and  Immunity.  GEO.  M.  STERNBERG,  Surgeon-General   U.S.A. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK  &  LONDON 


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